I’m In The Mood For A Video Flashback! (True Confession: I Wasn’t Allowed To Watch MTV, So I’m

Taylor Swift and the Trap of Needing To Be Liked

Swift's constant search for approval is a product of our internalized misogyny, but in 'Miss Americana,' she lets that go. We need to do the same.

This is my favorite of the #MissAmericana reviews, although I think the headline is a bit off. (Loved the doc, BTW. I subscribed to Netflix just to watch it.)

My favorite president

I vividly remember my only visit to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. I have the photos from it in the house where I found peace and quiet for the first time in my life. 

President Lincoln was said to have suffered from depression, and I can identify with that. It leaves you empty, so you need the closeness of others but don’t want to spread your glass-half-emptiness.

I’ve sought comfort on the Internet ever since the February night when my maternal grandfather died. He had lost an arm in a train accident long before I was born, and I don’t think he ever really got over it. To me he was the quiet yet grumpy Scotch-Irishman who wouldn’t dare let his wife Mary tell him what to do, and she wasn’t smart enough -- or didn’t care enough -- to realize that her insistence in doing things her way NEVER ended with him coming around to her point of view. And yet when he died around Valentine’s Day that year (when I was a junior in high school), they had the sweetest parting moment. He shared a “Be Mine” candy heart with her and then fell asleep forever. I was chatting with friends on AOL at the time. I heard my mother scream and then ran into the kitchen to ask my father’s mother what had happened. They told me, and I sort of matter-of-factly went back to chatting online. I didn’t process it until the next day when I had to excuse myself from Physics class and then proceeded to the bathroom to weep.

Before they closed my grandfater’s casket at the funeral, I tossed in a poem called “Flowers for Ivere” (he was named after the soap, but his poor parents didn’t know how to spell). He was buried in the section of a Memphis, Tennessee, cemetery where all the legendary newspaper men and women were buried. He was one who communicated through the stories he’d show us when he thought we might enjoy reading the news. He would stay up late into the night to read every word of every paper every day. Those were much better times. s

We young people love to criticize the “Boomers” and those even older, but I suspect we are the dumb ones, not the other way around. They could appreciate the little things. They were stubborn, but stubbornness is a necessary evil when you have to go through life armed-man. And he wouldn’t dare let my grandmother help him button his shirt. He could do it himself, thank you very much. (He did, however, enlist me to help upon occasion.) That’s the type of things I miss -- the little intangibles that didn’t matter back then, but now that they’re gone and we’re spending a day reflecting on dead people, I think about those things.

I never got to find out about his family, and I’m afraid I’m about to miss out learning about my father and the things he’s alluded to but doesn’t have the heart to tell me. Some of it I have inferred, but I neither want to ask the questions I’d like to ask nor do I want to hear the answer.

I long to go back to those days that seem almost like dreams, the stories I haven’t shared because I don’t feel it’s my place.

I’ve never been good at public speaking -- I often am silent in public, and that’s interpreted as being stuck up or that I don’t like anyone but myself.

After brain surgery, my perspective on everything changed, but I still feel like that little boy trapped inside his head. I only seem to be able to express myself when I type, because that’s about how fast my brain moves before jumping to another thought process. 

This is the type of stuff I wanted to write in a book so that I could drift away from dwelling on all the negativity of the world. I want to live, but I feel I can do that only if I have a ying to my yang. Music is what makes me happy, so I know that’s where I tend to gravitate. But I don’t know how to leap from my current reality (a messy home in a mostly quiet neighborhood a few blocks from the water in Florida) to where I want to be, which is with someone who has captured my attention. And of course there’s a new wrinkle -- that I have to move back to the city I felt I needed to escape from, which is now flooding just like it did two times when I was barely old enough to remember anything.

The leap is the hardest part, and honestly I think I would have stayed silent forever if I hadn’t nearly died and then woke up to a reality that I’m not allowed to talk about except in these long diatribes that don’t really say anything.

I would like to take a minute to think Mrs. Cunningham. Fluff truly is overrated! And so today on President’s Day I’d like to do something that you’re not supposed to do as a journalist: bury the lead. And while I know the old adage that I shouldn’t put off till tomorrow what I could do today, I still want to hold onto the anonymity for another day. Many people who know me probably know to what I’m alluding, but it’s not a good idea to be a blabber-mouth -- even on an underused social media platform where secrets go to be buried. My family’s neighborhood (to which I soon will have to return sans a miracle) is under a flooding threat, and it’s not my place to share this good news lest I steal his thunder again.

Plus, I’ve got to go pick up my crazy cat from the vet. She’s supposed to be a comfort animal, and she is very pretty, but I miss my dog, who my brother and I affectionately called Mr. Pup Dog. He’s buried under a rose bush in the house where I grew up -- back in the day where you didn’t need TV or anything else to entertain you. You could just ride your bike and be free of it all.

For all of you 39211 brats like me, I’d like to say: Long live “The Dip.” Those days were the best ever!

And P.S. If a certain woman reads this and wants to “be the man,” I leave my light on. ;)

Marigolds frame the #mountains.

Since the last time I wrote to you, dear Lizzie, I have remembered new things and am learning new things. I have old video relevant to this case, but I have no working cassette player, so I’m making NEW TIME while I read about this -- https://law.justia.com/cases/virginia/supreme-court/1986/830529-1.html -- and listen to sports and fantasy baseball. ;0

This mix is dedicated to my favorite redhead. I apologize for posting it a day late.

Amateur food tip

Adding fresh #strawberries to any salad makes it so much better!

Cane and unable

Knew something was different when I woke up this morning. Having to use my cane to walk, which is getting more often. I’m starting to think I suffered some spinal cord damage when I had brain surgery.

I’m feeling patriotic today. #music

I miss writing

I enjoyed sending cards to you. I don’t really know where to find you except on certain dates. I dream about you knocking on my window and I come outside and kiss you on the porch. We can kiss in the rain if you want to like in that movie, but I prefer to stay dry when possible. (But wait at least a week; I might still be contagious. :(

Better day

I didn’t sleep in, which back in the day would be a bad thing, but today it was a positive. I went to the gym as the sun was rising, filled up with my grocery store discount and got a smoothie for $3 (plus protein). I couldn’t work out as long as I wanted to (had to switch from elliptical to the treadmill), but based on where I was a week ago, I’m feeling good. I’m even cooking salmon tonight.