Lynn Schneider's Blog, page 8

Book Review: Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

(I am probably back now. But having just arrived after four weeks, I likely won’t have time for blogging yet. Hope I had a good time! I’m sure I did.)

I read this probably fifty years ago when I was very young, and I never forgot it, just like there were movies from the fifties I couldn’t forget either. (I wrote a review of the 1950’s movie, The Incredible Shrinking Man.) I reread Anne of Green Gables recently, out of curiosity, to compare it to what I remembered.

This is a YA novel about a girl with a vivid imagination, an orphan who comes to live with Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. They wanted to adopt a boy from the orphan asylum (doesn’t that sounds like a grim place, the orphan asylum?) to help out on the family farm. But there was a huge misunderstanding and a girl was delivered to the train station instead of the boy they expected.

Matthew and Marilla are not married, they are brother and sister, and they reside in the family homestead at Green Gables in Avonlea on St. Edward’s Island, Canada. I wondered why the author chose to have them be siblings as opposed to spouses, but in the end, I believe it was because of Matthew’s debilitating shyness. He never could have found his way to talk to a woman other than his sister. And Marilla wasn’t romantic enough to have ever found anyone.

Matthew went to the station to fetch the orphan home, and was aghast to discover it was a girl waiting for him there. A boy would have been bad enough to make conversation with on the way home, but a girl? Whatever would he say to her? It turned out not to be a problem because Anne did all the talking. Matthew was quite taken with her, but Marilla was a harder sell. It took her an additional day, before she decided they should keep Anne.

Marilla is sensible. Frugal and industrious with God-fearing ideas of what is and isn’t proper behavior. I remembered her as being much stricter, and much more dour than when I reread the book. I knew that Anne was an orphan and they had taken her in, but I thought they were related, as in aunt and uncle. But no, they were no relation.

The novel covers five years of Anne’s life, from eleven until she turns sixteen. It’s the Little Golden Book The Ugly Duckling all over again, which was maybe my favorite childhood story book of all. I always hoped I might be like the ugly duckling, and turn into a beautiful swan, I guess.

Anne bewitches everyone, the townspeople, the students in school, and most of all Matthew and Marilla with her enthusiasm, her imagination and her appreciation of life and all that is good in it. The descriptions of the countryside are breath-taking, which I probably didn’t appreciate back then when I first read it.

She finds her nemesis in Gilbert Blythe, and I remembered that as being more two-sided, but it really wasn’t. From the fateful day Gilbert called her “carrots” because of her red hair, Anne hated him, and Gilbert regretted those words, because he actually liked Anne a great deal, and wanted to be friends. But Anne held onto her grudge.

She’s a fair-skinned, freckle-faced, red head and these physical traits were not good ones to have back then, and she was thin too, and grew tall. The ugly duckling characteristics firmly in place, it’s so very heartwarming when she evolves into an attractive young woman, with freckles faded, and her hair turned auburn. She is never described as pretty, but the reader perceives her to be beautiful in a Cate Blanchett, or the very attractive actress in Brad Pitt’s new arty movie, The Tree of Life, Jessica Chastain, type of way.

One of the How-to-Write-Better books I read discussed the evils of telling vs. showing, but then went on to say in effect: But really, we can advise about show don’t tell all we want but talk to Jane Austen about that. In other words, develop your own style and do what comes naturally, like Ms. Austen did. Ms. Montgomery reminds me of Jane Austen, there’s a lot of telling instead of showing, but I think that’s what authors did back then, at least more so than now. They didn’t have the benefits of writing how-to’s so they just did the best they could, and the good ones were really, really good.

Here’s an example:

Here sat Marilla Cuthbert, when she sat at all, always slightly distrustful of sunshine, which seemed to her too dancing and irresponsible a thing for a world which was meant to be taken seriously.

I believe that could be construed as “telling” but so what? I like it.

What I remembered most was Anne’s desire to own a dress with “puffed sleeves”. Marilla considered puffed sleeves the ultimate in frivolity, and refused to make dresses for Anne that weren’t sensible. Who of us, at maybe, twelve years of age, can’t sympathize with Anne, and her desire to be fashionable, and to dress like all the other girls? I remember that. And when Matthew finally takes matters into his own hands, and Anne gets her puffed sleeves, it brought such a feeling of satisfaction to me, I felt like a kid again.

I am very glad I reread it. It was just as good as I remembered, even now when I’m older and more cynical. No one writes YA novels like it any longer. They weren’t even called Young Adult Fiction back then I don’t think. I also read the Cherry Ames Nurse series, and of course, Nancy Drew, in addition to the Anne books. I doubt any of the others can have the kind of appeal of Anne though, at this more advanced stage of my life.

Heartily recommended for all those who would like to recapture something they felt at a (much) younger age!

Book Review: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

(I must be in Rome now. Probably ready to be home again.)

I don’t remember how I heard about this novel. Maybe Goodreads or someone may have mentioned it in a blog or a comment to a blog. Whenever I see an opinion about a book, that it is “beautifully written”, I’m intrigued and if it’s even remotely within my genre comfort zone, I investigate.

The Sense of an Ending was short-listed for the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, which is awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. It is a very prestigious award, and the winner can be assured of international success. It is a mark of distinction to be included in the shortlist, or even to be nominated for the longlist.

The novel takes place over a span of forty years, beginning in the sixties up to the present. Now I’m really intrigued, because that is exactly the time frame for my own novels. It’s written in first person POV, which is probably my favorite, and the main character is a very likable, if a somewhat dull, boy/man.

The first section is the backstory, in the sixties, and is a very amusing, frank account of coming-of-age as only men can do it. Men seem to be so forthright about that time in their lives when they write about it, I often wish I could enjoy the same candor.

The story takes place in London, so notwithstanding the subtle language differences as written by an English author, it is, in fact, “beautifully written”, and comedic and insightful, yet puzzling. Tony is constantly told that “he just doesn’t get it” and I must admit, I didn’t get it either, and still don’t and I think the author probably intended it that way. It’s one of those stories where, once you know how it ends, you figure out what probably happened to cause it to end the way it did.

Tony is involved with a girl, who is a PITA when she’s young, and after she comes back into his life forty years later, it’s clear she hasn’t improved, and in fact is worse than that, as if her life between then and now has been filled with sadness and hard times or both.

The book starts out with the sixties timeframe for less than half, then jumps to present day, with Tony narrating what has happened to him, as he remembers it. This is an important point because, memory, or lack of, or imperfect, is a big part of the story. How much of what we remember is true, and how much is what we have always told ourselves is true, and embellished and exaggerated as time goes on? How much of memory is what we wished had happened, so over time it morphs into being that way?

Here are some of Tony’s thoughts about memory:

Again, I must stress that this is my reading now of what happened then. Or rather, my memory now of my reading then of what was happening at the time.


What you fail to do is look ahead, and then imagine yourself looking back from that future point. Learning the new emotions that time brings. Discovering, for example, that as the witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been.


We live with such easy assumptions, don’t we? For instance, that memory equals events plus time. But it’s all much odder than this. Who was it said that memory is what we thought we’d forgotten? And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn’t act as a fixative, rather as a solvent. But it’s not convenient — it’s not useful — to believe this: it doesn’t help us get on with our lives; so we ignore it.


How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but — mainly — to ourselves.

In the present day part, we discover that Tony had written a letter to a friend, which seemed out of character for him, in that it was cruel and unnecessary. This part bothered me, that he would do such a thing and I didn’t think it rang true. Also, did anyone use the term “control freak” during the sixties? I am always very careful of this, in my writing, did they really say this or that back then? Because, language has changed over the years and phrases we use commonly now weren’t necessarily used back then.

The letter was my main issue, I can forgive the control freak part, but it seemed like we should have been given more of the answers than we were. Everything was a bit of a puzzle. And the woman, Victoria, who kept saying he didn’t get it, I wanted to tell her, of course he didn’t get it! How could he? He wasn’t privy to the information.

But it was an enjoyable read, and once I had read it, I discovered that I needed to read it again, knowing what I now knew and when I did that, it seemed less puzzling but still, it’s clear it has been left to the reader to figure out what happened.

The observations made by Tony are priceless, and I’ve included some here that I marked while reading.

Most people didn’t experience “the sixties” until the seventies. Which meant, logically, that most people in the sixties were still experiencing the fifties— or, in my case, bits of both decades side by side. Which made things rather confusing.


There’s nothing wrong with being a genius who can fascinate the young. Rather, there’s something wrong with the young who can’t be fascinated by a genius.


It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.


What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully? Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life happen to him? Who had the usual ambitions and settled all too quickly for them not being realised? Who avoided being hurt and called it a capacity for survival? Who paid the bills, stayed on good terms with everyone as far as possible, for whom ecstasy and despair soon became just words once read in novels? One whose self-rebukes never really inflicted pain? Well, there was all this to reflect upon, while I endured a special kind of remorse: a hurt inflicted at long last on one who always thought he knew how to avoid being hurt — and inflicted for precisely that reason.

I would recommend this book to anyone. It’s a short read, can be done in one sitting. It is an example of how an everyman, who pictures himself as uninteresting, boring even, is far from it. As if every life has had interest and drama along the way, even if you don’t remember that it did.

Book Review: The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry

(I must be back in London from Paris by now. We wanted to take the Chunnel Train for that experience. I hope the French people were okay with my woeful French!)

Initially, I was interested in The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry because it’s the success story of a self-published author making it into the big time, and a two million dollar contract. In doing my research for this post to get the particulars, I came upon an NPR story that aired back in 2008. According to that piece, Ms. Barry and her husband thought they could publish the book themselves, since they had a company which published games, but found that the game experience, while helpful, wasn’t exactly the same. The book is set in Salem so they started locally there, and gained support from local book stores, who recommended The Lace Reader to book clubs nearby. The first two clubs got printed pages of the book in boxes, as none had been printed yet, and the book clubs were encouraged to respond with feedback.

Eventually they printed 2000 copies, word of mouth spread to book clubs all over the country and the local bookstores talked the book up and helped them make important contacts in the publishing world. This led them to a publicist who got the book to the influential Publishers Weekly, and the book got a good review.

Once that happened, a Ms. Rebecca Oliver happened on the scene, a literary agent with a somewhat snarky manner and a disgusting Valley Girl accent. “When one thinks of self-published, there’s a sort of a whole, UHHM, idea of what self-published means and that’s that the author has probably tried to sell the book previously to New York publishers and they’re selling it out of the trunk of their car now. And you assume there is a certain quality to the work.” I wonder if Ms. Oliver has changed her mind, as a few years have gone by since she said this and, as we know, the self-publishing world has evolved just a bit since then, and many agents are looking for other ways to make a living.

I wish there were a way to get that VG accent onto paper. The growly, twanginess and that cute little uplift at the end of the sentence, which makes it, like, a question?

Supposedly, the book has “the kind of plot twists that readers like to dissect”. Yes. That the book has a “very compelling ending”. No.

I beg to disagree. The ending has been described by some to rival The Sixth Sense. Remember that one, where Bruce Willis finally realizes he is dead and neither he (nor the audience) had known that before? It worked, but it was a stretch. Well, this novel’s ending is a real stretch and it doesn’t work. I am frankly amazed that it can be described as “compelling”. To me, it was contrived and unbelievable. Yes, I know. It’s fiction. But still.

I liked the book mostly, the editing was perfect. It started on a somewhat funny note, a nice hook, which I always appreciate. The characters were not perfect people, which I also liked, but the mystery surrounding the drowning death of one woman, and the disappearance of another, while compelling, was resolved in a ho-hum sort of way. The real clincher came very near the end, and I nearly threw the book away at that point.

There were pretty, almost poetic lines at the beginning of each chapter, about the lace and how it could be read, which I liked. There were characters who didn’t need to be in the story at all, which I didn’t like.

I’ll do the Page 99 test on this book and find something I liked and something I didn’t. This page happens to be the first page of Chapter 11. I like the blurb at the beginning of the chapter, it is well-written. The half page of text contains short, choppy sentences. I lot of “I did this and then I did that” – Hemingwayesque, without the distinctive writing style.

The book is written in first person present tense, very difficult for an inexperienced author to do, but I thought this was done well.

I liked it well enough, I had started it once, got halfway through and shelved it before taking it up again and starting over. It was a compelling enough read for the most part, but the ending blew it for me.

Book Review: The Art of Mending by Elizabeth Berg

By this time, I have spent one week in London. I hope it’s going well (these posts have been schedled in advance). Here’s a lovely Women’s Fiction Novel.

Elizabeth Berg writes women’s fiction, and she does it well. She was born around the time most of the people who read this blog were, and she mostly writes stories about that age group. Her books aren’t romance novels but are stories about friendship, families, divorce, even death. I really like Ms. Berg’s novels, I’ve read several of them and I will likely go on to read many more.

The Art of Mending is about a woman, Laura, who makes her living as a quilt artist, designing custom creations for clients. She was always the domestic type, hence the title and says the following about the art of mending:

You’ll always notice the fabric scar, of course, but there’s an art to mending: If you’re careful, the repair can actually add to the beauty of the thing, because it is testimony to its worth.

At a family reunion, her sister reveals some things, things that happened during their childhood, about their mother, things that Laura doesn’t believe, or maybe she half believes, or maybe she really knew all along, but didn’t want to believe. I was hooked, on the suspense of what it was Laura’s sister would tell her, and it kept me reading.

I liked this book, but it might not be my favorite. Some of the others were funnier. Ms. Berg has a distinctive voice, and some of her characters are unusual and quirky. She writes about everyday things, things that could happen to anyone, from breast cancer to broken marriages to high school reunions.

There were characters and revelations and situations and I wasn’t quite sure why they were in the story. An example: Laura decides to throw a small dinner party and the attendees promised to make an interesting mix and then it didn’t happen. Everyone cancelled and I wondered why it was brought up in the first place. I didn’t clearly understand the motivation behind a certain revelation from her husband, and occasionally I felt like some of the story was “filler”.

The author has a way of ending a chapter that is filled with meaning. There might be a name for it; Jodi Picoult does it to an even greater degree than Elizabeth Berg, a way of saying something and then twisting it around, so that it is more dramatic. Here’s an example:

My mother, smiling brightly, looking directly into your eyes before she embraced you tightly, would feel a million miles away. My father, averting his gaze before he took you into his arms, would be the one who felt close.

(If anyone knows the name for that particular technique, please comment!)

There is a section I particularly liked, as Laura described her life and the love she has for her husband. She married later in life, he had lost his first wife, and they are a genuinely happy couple. Laura talks about how nothing has changed for her, as far as her husband is concerned, that he still thrills her, and as a couple, they are as they always were. It was a very sweet internalization, and it made me think.

I would recommend this author to anyone who likes good women’s fiction.

Book Review: Man in the Woods by Scott Spencer

My first full day in London. Bet I’m still jet-lagged! Below is a review of a great novel. It could be called Women’s Fiction, but maybe General Fiction is a better category for it.

This is not the first book I have read by Scott Spencer, but I guess I’d have to say it’s the best I’ve read so far. But I might feel that way, because I’ve just read it. I probably felt the same way after all the others.

There’s just something about Mr. Spencer’s books, his judicious use of passive voice and present tense, that makes his writing lyrical and melancholy. That’s the feeling I got from this novel, an underlying sadness. Something happened, something that was never supposed to happen, that could have been avoided if only Paul, the main character, hadn’t been where he was at the time he was. And still the event could have been avoided even then, but it happened and it was just plain bad luck that it did. It was traumatic. Life changing.

Once the event has taken place, and everything has changed, Paul has to adjust to it. And not only does it change his life, but the life of Kate, the woman with whom he lives. Kate showed up earlier in A Ship Made of Paper and I liked her then too, but since that time, she’s become a recovering alcoholic and written a self-help book called Prays Well With Others. She feels she’s been helped by God, that she has seen the light, that her life is now guided and she shares it with her readers, and because she is a superb writer, she becomes very successful. She and Paul live with her daughter, Ruby, in a rural farmhouse in upstate New York.

The event involves a dog. The dog witnessed the event, and Paul takes the dog to live with him. And Mr. Spencer proves he can capture the essence of the dog, as well as he does his other characters. The dog has a personality, a quiet animal with good days and bad days. He’s predictably sweet and Paul, Kate and Ruby settle in with him, until they can’t remember when he wasn’t around.

Paul is the strong, handsome type, a carpenter, completely smitten with Kate, and Kate loves Paul with a love so all-encompassing, it matters little that there are differences and silences between them. It’s a beautiful love story, and Kate might be a little quicker-witted than Paul, and she makes the majority of the money that supports their household, but that doesn’t matter to her. To be trite, he “completes” her.

There are internalizations of Paul and Kate, which seem to be essays in themselves. No dialogue, just beautiful words, masterful sentences. One of my favorites was one of Kate’s. She is on a timetable, always plotting, planning time for she and Paul to be alone together. He’s a little more casual, he doesn’t seem to recognize that there might be a half hour here or there, when they could be “together” like Kate does. She hurries through life in order to get back to Paul while his path through life is less planned.

An example:

She doesn’t mind doing the work, because of the reward. The slow fill of him as he notches his hips inch by inch closer to her, she enjoys the anticipation of the bright delirium sex unleashes in her, an extremity of emotion and abandon that she has never before experienced and never actually believed other people experienced, either, and she enjoys moving things around in her schedule so there is more time for them to be together. It’s like clearing brush so the flowers can be seen. But there is no question in her mind that if Paul were in her position right now he would not be thinking of how to get out of the city in time to be home so that there was a chance to lie next to her.

Scott Spencer is one of those authors who says so much in a few words, it’s as if each word is carefully chosen. I like to think of his wonderful sentences rolling off the keyboard one after another, but they are so perfect, I doubt that’s how it happens.

He is also a master of adult love affairs, the positive and negative aspects and with obsessive love, evident in his earlier novel, Endless Love, which was made into a movie. I have yet to see it, and maybe I never will because I’ve heard it’s different from the book and a bit, well, cheesy.

Once in a while, a graphic detail might pop out at you, and it can be a little shocking. I saw it in a couple of his other books but not this one so much.

When I’m reading a Scott Spencer novel, I like to read a chapter and think about what I’ve read before starting another. I’m going to be very disappointed when there’s no Scott Spencer books I haven’t read. I like to wait a while between reading them, because I find myself thinking for weeks about what I’ve read.

I give this novel five stars. An enthusiastic five stars.

Monsieur Squirrel

My adrenaline is still pumping. I’m afraid to put my ear buds back in to continue with my French lesson since I want to be able to hear what is going on in the house.

So, here I come, up the basement stairs after tossing in a load of wash (all nicely sorted, and shouted-out, and all the dispensers filled with their appropriate liquids), and I’m practicing the phrase “I don’t understand French” (Je ne comprends pas Français!) over and over because it’s the only thing I’m sure of with the French lessons, that I don’t understand French, and I continue up to my second story loft/office and who is sitting atop the file cabinet but Monsieur Squirrel! 

I dub him Monsieur Squirrel, affectionately, hoping that he is but a scared, out-of-touch, senile old rodent who has wandered in, through an opening we have yet to discover, and once in can’t figure out how to get back out. This isn’t the first time M. Squirrel has gifted us with an appearance. He once showed up in the basement which is a lot harder to get him out of actually, so I guess I can be grateful I found him upstairs.

God. I’m a grown woman and I’m this afraid of something that probably weighs less than one pound? He doesn’t like me either, and runs into a bedroom. I flail around in the hallway, running this way and that, to and fro, trying to decide what to do. If I go downstairs, I’m not sure I’ll have the courage to come back up.

But wait. He’s more afraid of me than I am of him. And then I think holy shit, then he must be fairly well paralyzed with fear. I know he wants to get out of here as much as I want him out, so let’s work together on this. Coaxing isn’t going to work because I’m pretty sure he won’t respond to sweet talk, and I don’t understand Squirrel so a bit of tough love is necessary. Shouting and stomping and scaring the literal crap out of M. Squirrel, so that he and I can reach an agreement and I can be where I want to be (without him) and he can be where he wants to be (with his squirrel buddies, maybe there’s even a Madame Squirrel).

I am afraid if I go downstairs I’ll never have the guts to come back up, knowing he is up here.

But I go downstairs. I open the back door and the front door wide, so he can get out, and venture back upstairs, heart pounding and I’m screaming at the top of my lungs so he’ll be sure to hear me. When I come back up, I decide to open a window in the master bedroom and remove the screen so he has another escape route.  

Gah! As I enter the room I see him dart under the bed! He has now relocated to my bedroom! I vacate the premises and return to the loft and shout. Get out! I see him (thankfully) run out of the bedroom down the stairs to the first floor, but he (duh, M. Squirrel!) completely misses the fact that he’s run right by the open front door.

I chase him around the living room and it works, or at least gets him into the kitchen where there is another opened door. But he (again) ignores his escape to freedom and decides instead to run along the counter and hop onto the computer desk and then bash into a closed window before he leaps up onto the bar. He plops down from there  to the floor and casually strolls outside. I watch him go and have never been so glad to get rid of a houseguest in my life.

But now I’m still kind of spacey and uncertain about it and I’m thinking, what if he comes back? What if he decides he likes it in here? What if he really is old and senile and looks at this as a nice rest home? A place to spend his golden squirrel years?  

I can no longer concentrate on Lesson 4 of The Pimsleur Approach, Quick and Simple French – there’s nothing quick and simple about French, I’m here to tell you – because now I’m sure there must be a whole Squirrel family in residence. It could be a regular Squirrel Sta-cation for all I know.

Thinking that I might return to some level of normalcy later, I postpone French Lesson 4, but vow to take it up this afternoon, when my heart rate has returned to normal. The French lessons are because I’m leaving for Europe in a few days for a month (London / Paris / Rome), so I’m reading Rick Steves books and attempting to learn some French, since I suspect French people will be nicer to you if you at least attempt to speak their language.  I’ve heard that the French don’t like us Américain(e) much, but then I’ve also heard that isn’t true. Not knowing what to expect, I thought I’d at least try learning enough French to convince them that, though I may be a vile and vulgar Américain, I at least cared enough to learn sufficient French to convince les Français of my stupidity and complete ineptitude with their language.

I will be posting reviews of books for the next five weeks, as I’m not sure what kind of blogging I’m going to be able to do whilst over there, across the pond. These are all good books that readers of this blog might enjoy, and were originally posted at another blog site, Boomers and Books.

While we are gone, I hope Monsieur Squirrel doesn’t decide to take up permanent residence here.

Au revoir!

 Images courtesy of freedigitalprints.net

12 Things Not To “Like” About Facebook

This post might offend some Facebook users so, true to my wimpy, introverted nature, I won’t post a link to this post from my personal Facebook page. After all, I don’t really harbor any latent death wishes. I will only post it on my Books page since most likely the people who have “liked” that page will forgive my rants, given that you’ve more or less volunteered for it.

Facebook was a good idea in the beginning. Now it’s pretty much tripe. I still look at it, but I rarely comment on anything, and I am not guilty of posting any of the types of things exampled below. I wouldn’t do it, because I very much believe that NOTHING any of my “friends” post about their personal religious beliefs or political sentiments will ever affect how I feel about those same subjects, so I wouldn’t think the reverse would be true.

Speaking of “friends”, that’s kind of a bump-up in the amount of affection I feel for upwards of 75% of the Facebook personalities I am currently connected to. If I were able to recognize even 10% (a generous percentage) of my Facebook friends if I met them head-on in the frozen food aisle, that would be happily surprising.  

That’s not to say I don’t have genuine friends on Facebook and I have marked them as such. But I’ve been gathering info from all the statuses and links so I can blast away at Facebook in this post.

Not all of the 12 are friend-related grievances. Some are just Facebook being what it is, a big colossal waste of time. Not to mention, every Facebook user is in mortal danger of having his or her equilibrium thrown into a spin cycle with flashing blue to pink ads or things that move.

Is that picture of the woman with beet juice on her face moving or am I having a seizure here? Damn, I knew I shouldn’t have combined that goat’s milk with the Happy Hour Sake at Ed’s Sushi Shack last night.

Here’s the list of twelve (and there are probably fifty more):

The “You’re a Winner” flashing banner. This is the blue/pink thing I was talking about. I have won a free Walmart gift card? Somehow I doubt that. And besides, I avoid Walmark like I would a mosquito wearing a West Nile Virus Alert ID bracelet.

This is not a joke! The fact that you have to say that this is “not a joke”, is a joke. What is it about this that is NOT a joke?  I am the 100,000th visitor of the day so I can claim my “prize”? Funny, I have seen that same thing before. How can I be the 100,000th visitor on one day and then again a day later? I don’t get the math here.

Girls online. Well, look at these tarty little Eastern European girls. Warning! They are VERY attracted to westernized men. I am pretty sure I listed my gender as female. I am also pretty sure these fluties would not appeal to lesbians. So assuming these two things, that NO female is interested in flirting with or dating these Eastern European girls, why would you show me this ad? Get with the program, Facebook. It’s not rocket science.

Games. Now, I’m sure there is probably a way to prevent this type of post from appearing. Some setting somewhere. But the real problem is I don’t care enough to investigate it in order to figure out where that is. Do we really have to see this stuff? No, I don’t have any space helmets! And when did we start playing Cityville? I thought we were playing Farmville! Oh wait, the Industrial Revolution must have happened.

Horoscopes. Ah. If only I cared about your Virgo horoscope. Not being a Virgo, and not even giving the teeniest of sh*ts about my own horoscope, I certainly don’t care about yours. But wait. It says “Everything you’ve been working towards is likely to be positively received… “ If only I’d been a Virgo! I hold my parents directly responsible for the misalignment of my astrological future endeavors. However, I believe the key word in the horoscope here is “likely”.

“This person supports” with the arrow pointing at the supporter’s Facebook profile pic. I think some PhotoShopping is in order. How about a little text change here. “This person supports The Ritualistic Sacrifice and Blood-letting of Small Animals.”

Challenges. The above is a nice sentiment. But I refuse to do this just because you Double Dog Dare me to. Sure, Mattel should make the Hope doll. But will they? No. Because it probably wouldn’t make economic sense. So maybe your time could be better spent by writing directly to Mattel if you feel strongly about this subject? I’m just playin’ devil’s advocate here.

Really annoying posters. Speakig of the devil. Oh my. This is offensive on so many levels. First of all, how do you know this kid feels that way? Did you ask him? Did you get his permission to use his image on this poster? Aren’t you kinda playing with fire here? What if this lovely urchin turns out to be an agnostic? He might sue you when he grows up, and you know? That would, like totally serve you right.

Requests to get you to copy and post as a status.  Another nice sentiment. And love the little heart things. The more the better! But no, I’m afraid I can’t do this. Why? Because it is phony and disingenuous? Well, that’s a start. It’s kind of like those billboards you see with the lone Bible verse on it. I always wonder who put that there, who paid for it, and what do they hope to accomplish? I feel the same about this. Of course everyone feels this way about cancer. No need to cheese it up.

Horrific political sentiments. This is further proof that some people are plain mean-spirited, nasty and will say and post anything. This is just vile. It’s stupid and insulting. Want to find a good way to get about half of your “friends” to un-friend you? Post this. The woman who did it got the old hover, unfriend, click from me. Not that she probably cares. And she was after all, not in the 10% that I would recognize in the frozen food aisle.

Unrecognizable pictures of nasty people. Who is this kindly looking gentleman? He looks like a nice man. WAIT! That’s Rush Limbaugh. No fair posting pictures that make him look like a regular guy so that nobody even recognize him. I bet someone just told him his prescription for Oxycontin is ready at Walgreen’s.

Religion-R-Us. Ta-da! The most irritating, disgusting of all — requests that you “friend” Jesus. I made this lovely collage because I couldn’t decide which image was worse. You know how Evangelicals always scoff and titter when someone spots the image of the Virgin Mary in a tortilla shell? This is right down that same religious-nuttery street. To me, this borders on sacrilege. Get your priorities straight. Don’t mix Facebook with your version of religion, whatever that is.

Well, there you have it! Twelve reasons. Do you need any more? Do you have any more?

My apologies that this post went well beyond the 800 word limit. Sometimes I just can’t shut up. 

Photo of 3D Man (sans sign text) courtesy of freedigitalprints.net

All other photos are screen shots from my personal Facebook page.

Will I Ever Be Freshly Pressed?

Will it ever happen? Will I ever be Freshly Pressed?

Alas. So far, it has not been so.

Being Freshly Pressed is a big deal to WordPress bloggers. And we all know that WordPress is the best blogging platform ever (!) with the best blogging tools ever (!!) and WordPress is, well, pretty awesome. (Will this help my chances, WordPress?)

If a blogger’s post ends up on the WordPress home page, he or she can expect high stats, lots of readers, lots of likes, lots of comments, lots of followers. In turn, if the blogger is a writer of books (like me), those readers will see my books, click on the images, buy from Amazon, and write five-star reviews. And I will live happily ever after.

I have never been, nor am I likely ever to be, Freshly Pressed. It just doesn’t seem to be in the cards for me. What am I doing wrong? Why can’t the WordPress gurus find me? Why do some bloggers become freshly pressed on their very first post?

And another thing. Occasionally (and I mean this literally – occasionally) I get a notification that a new reader is following my blog. These are so scarce that I nearly always look them up, see what they are up to. I see bloggers who have been at it for four months and have hundreds of followers already. How are they doing that? I have some piddling percentage of that number! Bah!

Enough whining.

I decided to look at each blog post that was Freshly Pressed as of Friday, July 20, to see if I could figure out what was good about it. What was it that caught the eyes of the choosers?

Here are a few of the FPd posts, and links, in case you are interested.

Can a Film Ever Truly Beat a Good Book? Basically no, says the post. If it is a really good book, one where you are drawn in by the characters and the story, a movie will usually come up a lot or a little short. Exception: The Help was almost as good in its film version as the book, but not quite. A very well-written post. 

Hey Rubiks Cube, EFF You! Okay. This is not good, not funny, filled with slight profanities which supposedly gets you bumped from the Freshly Pressed list. The formatting was strange. It had a nice picture of a Rubiks cube. I thought the original had a couple of typos but those have been corrected, if there were any. It was not long, thankfully.

Why Blogging Scares Me. OMG. This was good, the blogger is young (19) and that was apparent, which is fine. I like it a little better if you can’t discern the age or sex of the writer immediately. At least until they give away details so the reader can then figure it out. That’s just me though. The really pissable-off part is that this is the first post this individual has ever written! What?! How does it work that a first post such as this gets noticed and makes the list? I don’t get it. Not that it wasn’t good but… Really? Does this blogger know someone who is calling the Freshly Pressed shots?  It was well-written, despite a plethora of italics, bolded text and caps.

Shirley the Sheepish Feminist. This is pretty good, a post about feminism and why Jerry Seinfeld, in his new show Comedians Driving Around Getting Coffee, found  no women comics to drive around and chat with, only men. 

DIY Scratch Off Cards. Okay, who in their right mind wants to waste time making scratch-off cards?  I’m sure these cards work fine, and there were detailed instructions complete with pictures on how to make them. But why would anyone do this? In the event that I am completely missing the irony intended and also duly noting its originality (i.e. that anyone would have investigated this topic enough to write about it) I’d have to say this was very good.

Why I Watch The Newsroom. I have been told this is a very good series. I intend to watch it, so I was interested to read the review, which was good. From the comments, most think the show is excellent or were encouraged to watch by virtue of reading this post. It was a good review.

Follow the White Rabbit. I didn’t get much of this. It’s about artificial intelligence or something. I started yawning as soon as I realized this. Not into science fiction or fantasy or AI. Nice photos of billboards. Some would probably think this interesting. Alas, not me. But there’s nothing wrong with the post.

Dogs Married In $158,187.25 Wedding! Why Are You Still Single? Apparently a couple of dogs were wed and this pricey event took place in order to raise money for the Humane Society. It was just okay, not great. A picture of the bride and groom would have been funnier but this was not provided. The over-the-top craziness didn’t really work for me.

To My Son…..Finally The Phone Call. Wow. Poetry? I guess it is, short packed phrases which depict this mother’s trouble with her adult son. It was moving, yet I felt voyeuristic reading it, as if perhaps something so personal might be better left to a more private venue than the internet. And then it went FPd so even more people saw it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. 

My 15 Minutes. I suspect most of the calamities suffered during the 15 minutes before the film crew arrived might be a bit of an exaggeration in order to make this post funny. It didn’t work too well for me. Interesting concept: The writer of this blog is giving herself 1000 single days (no relationships, no dates, no sex) in order to “find herself”. That might work, but I guess if I told my husband I was going off for three years, he’d have some trouble with that.

DIY: Swimsuit Wrap. (Apparently “DIY” is big now.) Made with 1½ yards of fabric, four grommets and two chains. For some, I think this would be fine. Myself, I’m into “cover-ups” that are a little less revealing. My current cover-up is a burka. Nice post.

10 Non-fiction Books For the Novel Lover. I’ve read three, and this is a reminder that I always wanted to read Fast Food Nation. A good list.

None of these blogs rate an A+ in my opinion, although there have been FPd posts that I thought did merit that high grade. I have started following several blogs based on the post that was Freshly Pressed, and continue to enjoy every post from these fine writers. Here are three: The Write Transition, Life in the Boomer Lane, and The Byronic Man.

Photo courtesy of freedigitalprints.net

Questions About Offshoring American Jobs

Warning: Non-humorous post. The fact that I warn that this post may not be funny assumes that there are earlier posts which have been funny, which, of course, is only in the eye of the humor-beholder. 

There is one issue, well actually there are several, but this is one I’ve been thinking about for years. Outsourcing to other countries, or offshoring. Specifically, the offshoring, or elimination of American IT jobs. I do not profess to be an economic expert, nor do I have a degree in finance, but can anyone out there enlighten me as to how the practice of sending as many of our IT jobs as we can to other countries is good for our economy and ultimately for our country?

I’m just talking about IT here because it’s what affects me. Other professions currently offshored include (but are not limited to) writers, administrative assistants, tax preparers, web programmers and designers, drafters, human resources, call centers, and the biggest sinkhole of jobs, manufacturing. In 2011, 2,273,392 jobs were outsourced. 53% of the manufacturing jobs, 43% of IT jobs, 38% of R&D, and the list goes on. On and on.

My name is Peggy.

IT, in the olden days, was a niche career path where one could establish a place for him/herself in the solid, safe middle class. It took a certain amount of interest and aptitude in computers and logic, so it appealed to some but to others it seemed boring and nerdy. I always considered it a good thing that not everyone wanted to do this particular work since it was what I did, and if everyone wanted my job then there would be less opportunity for me. Selfish? Maybe. But I’m guessing most everyone feels that way about his or her chosen profession.

So we IT-ers enjoyed two-plus decades of secure cube-dwelling positions, established ourselves as professionals, bonded with those sharing our interests, bought homes, consumed things, put food on the table, planned for retirement, took vacations and saved for our kids’ educations. It wasn’t a grand lifestyle but it worked out pretty well for a lot of us.

Then came The New Millenium and the passion for money, and more money, and money no matter what, and screw your way to the top of the money making market. Do it cheap, in order to put more on the bottom line. Outsource, offshore, “right-size”. There are people who will do it for a third of the money. Get rid of the high-paid American workers. The larger the corporation, the more the push to outsource. Get your IT services cheap! Any corporation who is still paying the big bucks for foot-draggin’ Americans has some ‘splainin’ to do to its stockholders.

Aren’t we kind of paying the price for that now? Everyone complains about the current administration, how the “economy hasn’t improved” how unemployment hasn’t gone down. An aside here, isn’t the percentage of unemployment a manufactured number anyway? How do we count those who have used up their unemployment benefits and are still jobless, and unemployment-less as well? I never did get that.

If we have millions less jobs available here, how can the job market ever improve, how can the housing market improve, how can the tax base be supported? There are cities and municipalities going bankrupt now. As a matter of fact, it was the story of Scranton, Pennsylvania which prompted me to finally write this blog. Fire-fighters and policemen have had their wages slashed to minimum wage. Minimum wage? You can probably make more than that pulling Double Expresso Lattes at Starbucks. And the benefits might be better. So forget risking your life to do a job. What’s the point?

This is not a political blog. But what can the current administration do about this? Force corporations not to outsource? Or, convince them with straight talk and earnest pleas not to do it anymore, or at least reduce the number of jobs outsourced? I don’t know if that’s possible.

What I do know is that one of the candidates who will be on the ballot in November believes in outsourcing. He’s been accused of having done it. That’s not to say he won’t try really hard to change the way things are now, because for sure this individual has changed his mind a number of times about a number of issues. I’m just sayin’.

Interestingly, when I wanted to see if anyone out there was blogging about offshoring, I googled “blogs about offshoring”. Know what came up? Every item in the list concerned how to get offshore help to write blogs.

So I repeat my question. If there is someone out there who could tell me, or point me to an article or a book that would explain it all to me, how outsourcing helps (or at least doesn’t harm) our economy and our country, would you please comment? I surely would appreciate it.

I’ll leave you with an image. You know when you made that call to get help with your wireless internet router? This is where that call went.

The Man on The Plane

Yesterday I had to fly. Flying used to be fun, sort of exciting, but as we now know, everything has changed about the experience. Now it’s just, well, tedious. So many things to accomplish before I lay my head down. Or, in other words: Miles to go before I sleep. (I always liked that.)

There’s all the preparation to go. Don’t forget anything. Make sure there’s enough time. Count backwards. Let’s see. Flight leaves at 10:40 so let’s call that 10:30. Need an hour and a half at Tampa International Airport. (Actually, that’s a stretch, you really only need an hour, so I’m probably overcompensating by forty minutes at this point.) Allow thirty minutes for the shuttle to the airport from the rental car place. And thirty minutes to get to the rental car place.

Okay, we’re at the airport. Stand in line at the ticket counter to check two bags. Here, a slight diversion. These are bags designed to be carryons but of COURSE we can’t do that anymore because of silly rules about liquids in 4 ounce containers (thank you Mr. Shoe Bomber!) and other forbidden items which may become weapons, like nail files and miniature socket sets. Check the bags, reprint the boarding passes, show ID.

Next, stand in line to (again) show ID and boarding pass in order to get on shuttle for a one-minute whisk to the terminal. Once deposited safely terminalside, prepare for the TSA IPP (Invasion of Privacy and Patdown). Show ID and boarding pass (yet AGAIN), where a uniformed Security Specialist shines a light on your driver’s license and makes his secret little mark on your boarding pass. Take laptop out of case, disrobe and try to remember whether you need ID and boarding pass again. Try to keep track of belongings, get x-rayed, retrieve belongings, get dressed.

We are now ready to board the plane but, as usual, we’re about two hours early, having grossly over-estimated the amount of time everything will take. Play the waiting game and listen to lame pages. Will Ruth Quackenbush please pick up the nearest white courtesy telephone? Every ten minutes we are instructed that we are in an indoor clean-air facility and no smoking is permitted. And also a reminder that any unattended bags will be im-pound-ed.

Line up, get on plane. We usually board first, since I’m one of those anal people who has my right mouseclick finger poised at exactly 24 hours before boarding time so we can be part of the esteemed A Group.  The seats are three across, so if it’s a full flight, someone will be joining our cozy little party of two. It was a full flight. Okay, I’m in the middle seat, so let’s make eye contact with someone who is relatively slender and looks like he or she won’t want to make much conversation.

Woman and her husband approach, and she sits across the aisle and he sits next to me. He is a small, wiry sort of fellow with a thick crop of untended black hair. He looks a bit like he is continually on an adrenaline rush. He carries a book which is a good sign.

“Good place to sit!” he says. “More leg room here!”

“Yeah, I guess so,” say I, while I don’t believe there is any more leg room at this particular location than anywhere else.

His wife requests her “reading material” so he stands up in the aisle and proceeds to fumble in a suitcase in the overhead compartment holding up approximately forty passengers waiting to proceed to the rear of the plane where there are still empty seats remaining.

He gets to the material his wife has demanded and hands it to her and settles into his seat. He eats (rather noisily) a peach and half of an overripe banana before the plane takes off.

As we take off and are climbing to 10,000 feet where we can turn on electronic devices, he and his wife pass a small turquoise bottle filled with something that produces a pungent aroma back and forth. It smells a bit like smelling salts. What the…? It’s a bit stinky actually, and they reverently pass it back and forth and inhale deeply the fumes. Does anyone know what this is? I didn’t ask. Something for ear pressure problems? Air sickness? Maybe just good karma?

The flight attendant asks him if he’d like a complimentary juice, soft drink, tea or coffee. He orders a mixture of half cranberry juice, half diet sprite. It seemed a bit demanding to me, that he be served some sort of special refreshments. Let’s just keep it simple, shall we?

Snack? Peanuts and Ritz Mini Snack Thins (only 100 calories!) are offered.

“I’ll have four peanuts,” he says.

Four peanuts! Who says you can have four? You’re supposed to get one! What if everybody on this plane asked for four? He got his four, and later he accepted his Ritz Mini Snack Thins too. Then he proceeded to ask for two refills of his special concoction of cranberry juice and diet sprite. Clearly, here is a man who likes to take advantage of free stuff.

He read, did a crossword puzzle, and then fashioned himself a bookmark. He carefully ripped the back cover of the Southwest Spirit Magazine down about one inch, and bent the page down, flipping the magazine back and forth as he did this, elbows flailing and invading my personal space. Fold, press, run thumbnail firmly over the fold, flip, repeat. Finally he tore it off. Voila! Bookmark!

What?

When we stood up to get off the plane, waiting in perhaps the last line of the day, he said to his wife, “I did some verrrrry deep thinking during this flight.”

I think this guy might make his way into a novel somewhere down the line.