Love is in the Air

Thought for the day:  If love had a scent, I don't think it would smell like chocolate and roses. I think it'd smell more like baby powder and pot roast. 

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all. Got big plans for the day? No telling what Smarticus and I will be doing, but we'll probably be out and about somewhere, so I won't be Jill-on-the-spot about responding to comments today. Maybe not even until Monday.

Anyhow, so how do you like my love monkey? I'm not talking about Smarticus; I'm talking about that cute little stuffed monkey in the picture, which he gave me for Valentine's Day a few years ago. If you squeeze his belly, he gives a wolf whistle, and says in a dirty ol' man kinda voice, I go bananas over you!  Again, I'm talking about the monkey, not Smarticus, although come to think of it, it's just the sort of thing he'd say. That's why it's such a perfect gift. Forget about jewelry and furs, and all that jazz. A gift that makes me laugh wins me over every time.

Okay, so chocolate ain't bad, either. After all, a box of candy is never the wrong size, right? Although it came close to being too large one year. Smarticus bought me a box of chocolates big enough to cover the entire top of the coffee table. I kid you not. Whew! Talk about a LOT of candy! It took me almost two whole hours to eat it all. (Just kidding. It took more like three.)

I'll never forget some of the romantic cards and gifts Smarticus has given me over the years. (sigh) We were all of twelve or thirteen the very first time he wrote a poem (just for me!) in my autograph book. It went like this: Roses are red; violets are blue. You've got a shape like a B-52. I mean, doesn't that send shivers of sheer delight up and down your spine?

We weren't much older that that when he extended a lovely decorated box toward me, smiled seductively, and told me to open it. When I did, I found a barf-worthy severed finger lying atop a fluffy bed of cotton. It was his finger, of course, stuck through a hole in the box bottom and doctored up to look as disgusting as he could make it. Yeah, I know. Smartius was a bit of a farticus in those days.

But, what can I say? I married him anyway. How could I not? He's a gen-u-ine original, and even after all these years, he still knows how to make me laugh, and he still knows how to make my heart sing.

Talking about original, have you ever wondered who St. Valentine was and why he's associated with a feast day devoted to love? Why we associate this day with the color red... with red roses in particular... and why we exchange Valentines?

Well, then, you've come to the right place.

Our man Valentine was a priest in Rome during the reign of Claudius the Cruel, an emperor with an unholy affinity for declaring war. In fact, this dude's wars were so frequent and so unpopular, it got to where very few men were joining the military. The emperor, who was evidently just as stupid as he was cruel, decided the only reason men weren't rushing to fight his wonderful wars was because they were too darned attached to their wives and family. So he came up with a solution. He banned marriages.

But fear not. Our hero priest continued to perform marriage ceremonies in secret. That is, until the mean ol' emperor found out about it, and had him killed. By beating, stoning, and then beheading. (Talk about overkill.) Valentine was killed on February 14, 270.

Legend has it that he left a special note for the jailer's daughter, and signed it... from your Valentine. 

So, why the color red, you ask? For obvious reasons, blood red is the color of martyrs. And thanks to the martyred St. Valentine... it also became the color of love. Red roses represent Venus, the goddess of love. And Valentine himself sent the first Valentine card. St. Valentine's feast day was established in 496, but it didn't become recognized as a lovers' holiday and big day of romance until ten centuries later, when popular belief held that the fourteenth of February marked the start of mating season for birds.

So, if you consider Valentine's Day to be for the birds... you aren't entirely wrong.

At right is an example of a 1909 Valentine's Day card, which I found on Wikipedia. As a young girl, I remember buying big fancy cards for my mother... complete with scented stuffed satin hearts and lace around the edges... for the exorbitant price of thirty-five cents. My sweet Smarticus has sent me a bunch of beautiful cards over the years, but he'd still probably be more comfortable with one that said: Roses are red; violets are blue. Sugar is sweet, and so are you... The roses are wilting; the violets are dead. The sugar bowl's empty, and so is your head.

Just kidding. He's actually quite the romantic. (But I sure am glad he didn't know about St. Valentine losing his head over love when we were kids. The finger was bad enough.)

 How about some of these for the worst Valentine's Day gifts ever:

THIS wouldn't be a very nice Valentine's Day gift, either... especially if it came on the heels of a box of chocolates as big as the coffee table. No, just kidding. This isn't a gift from Smarticus. (It's actually one of our 1969 wedding gifts. Yep! Still got it!) But I'm just saying, it's not a very sentimental gift. It's right up there with giving your honey a bottle of diet pills, or a pair of slacks with wide load printed on the seat. 


Trying to forget someone you love is like trying to remember someone you never met.

Love is the thing that enables a woman to sing while she mops up the floor after her husband has walked across it in muddy boots.

If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?

Love doesn't make the world go 'round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile. [Franklin P. Jones]

You can't blame gravity for falling in love.  [Albert Einstein]

Lots of things are considered aphrodisiacs... like big red juicy strawberries, and rich dark chocolate... or better yet, big red juicy strawberries dipped in rich dark chocolate...

Um, where was I?

Oh, yeah. I wanted to tell you guys about one of the best aphrodisiacs of all time. Wanta put your lady love in the mood? Do the dinner dishes. I tell ya, nothing is as sexy to a woman as seeing her man tackling a load of dishes  while she's in the easy chair with her feet propped up... eating strawberries dipped in chocolate. Or if ya reeeeeally want to make her weak in the knees... clean the toilet bowl. 

Put a lotta love in your heart

Anyhow, whether you celebrate in a small way, or whether you go reeeally BIG...

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all. But wouldn't it be nice if we celebrated love...  every day?

                  For all you fans of The Big Bang Theory, here's a video I think you'll enjoy:

                                        Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

Never go to bed mad--- stay up and fight.  [Phyllis Diller]

A Catty Rerun

Thought for the day:  You know you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake. 

Those of you who live in the southeastern United States may have noticed a bright glow in the sky on Wednesday. Sorry about that. It was my husband's birthday. Even though we had the fire department waiting on stand-by, the candles still got a little out of control again this year. My bad. I really shouldn't have tried to save time by lighting all those darned things with a blow torch.

Oh well. I'll try to do better next year.

Yeah, so we're both getting older. Big deal. Age is just a number, right? (Especially when it's his number going up, and not mine.) To tell the truth, we don't make a big deal out of birthdays anymore. No candles at all. (Too dangerous!) And no big parties, for sure. 

We prefer smaller gatherings these days. Like maybe just Smarticus, me and a few dozen of our favorite juicy friends. (That's plenty spicy enough for us, even if our pals do end up getting steamed.)

Our cat Dash got stranded atop the fridge when our friends were splashing around in the sink, which reminded me of a post I did back in June of 2011:  Tale of an Ungrateful Kitty. So I'm gonna run it again, as soon as I share a short Tom Rush video about the joys of getting older:

Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.  [Stanislaw Jerry Lec]
                       {Too bad my work of art is being painted by Picasso...}

You don't stop laughing because you grow older. You grow older because you stop laughing.  [Maurice Chevalier]        

I'm happy to report that my inner child is still ageless.  [Jane Broughton]
                                       
You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old.  [George Burns]
                       
***********************

                                                        And now... for that rerun...

Thought for the day:  An invisible man married an invisible woman. Their kids were nothing to look at, either.

I've been poking fun at the English language lately, so I thought about writing a short Ogden Nash-type poem using words ending in ough to make fun of the fact that those words have so many different pronunciations.

Well, as they say, the best-laid plans of mice and men ...

I did write a poem, but it isn't Ogden Nash short. (or Ogden Nash clever) Has some ough words in it, but I ended up having more fun telling the tale than fulfilling the original premise. So, here it is, a silly little poem. It's based on a true story, and although I got away with batting my eyelashes back then, I was young, lithe, and lovely at the time. I'm afraid if I tried to pull that stunt now, Smarticus would haul me off to the eye doctor.


                                                               A Silly Little Poem

                                                   'Twas one in the morning, I vow,
                                                   When I heard a cat meow from a bough.
                                                   High up in a tree,
                                                   He seemed helpless to me.
                                                   Begged I, "Please get him down now."

                                                  With a frown, my man gave a cough,
                                                  Said, "No need to get the cat off.
                                                  He made his way up;
                                                  He can make his way down."
                                                  And I batted my eyes, sure enough.

                                                  'Twas sleeting and icy, so rough,
                                                  But my sweetie, so tender, so tough,
                                                  Climbed up on our ladder,
                                                  But that didn't matter;
                                                  To the cat, it wasn't enough.

The cat pulled back out of reach;
My man yelled, "Son of a beech!"
He stretched a bit more
To the kitty so poor,
And the cat gave a God-awful screech.

'Twas dark, so I couldn't quite see,
But the cat came tearing past me.
He'd run down my sweetie
And clawed off some meatie,
So I figured in trouble I'd be.

                                           "No more!" my man roared to me.
                                           "Next time, we leave the cats be.
                                           We don't need no damned ladder;
                                            It just doesn't matter.
                                            Have you ever
                                            Seen bones
                                            In a tree?"


                                   Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

                                                                   Me? I think I'll just ...

hang around

[The crab photo was taken by yours truly. Wikipedia provided the flames, and the catty pics come to us courtesy of Morguefile.]

Don't Forget to Say Thanks

Thought for the day:  Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind.  [Rudyard Kipling]

Yep, words are powerful. They can be wielded to create lasting images, to express and arouse heady emotions, and the most memorable of them may linger in our minds and hearts for a lifetime. But let's just consider two of them... the words thank you.

Although most people don't seem to place much value on handwritten thank you notes these days, I'm guessing that most of you spent time at the kitchen table as children, legs swinging and tongue peeking out the corner of your mouth, as you hunched over a sheet of paper and wrote those Christmas and birthday thanks for the swell socks and underwear messages. Some of you may have rebelled against the practice as adults, or maybe you're like me, and still think of thank you notes as an appropriate way to express appreciation, and still write them. (Minus the swinging legs and protruding tongue, of course.) But it wasn't until about a year ago that I realized I'd been terribly remiss in expressing another kind of thanks. Most of you are avid readers. Have you ever considered the idea that a book... any book... is like a gift to the world from its author? And maybe, just maybe, some thanks are in order?

                                                        And by thanks,  I mean ... a review.

You have no idea how very much writers crave and relish readers' reviews. Heck, that direct feedback from (hopefully) appreciative readers means more than the darned paycheck. (Okay, okay, okay, so maybe not to the millionaires...) But to most writers. And guess what? Through places like Amazon and Goodreads, it's oh-so-easy for anyone to publish a review these days, so you, too, can now send a thank you to your favorite writers.

Nowadays, I only review books I really like. It's cowardly, I know, but I figure it's not my job to make people unhappy. I'll leave that to the professionals.  [Meg Rosoff]

I'm kinda like Ms. Rosoff. I never sink my teeth into a book to draw blood, and have written only a handful of reviews with less than a three-star rating. When it comes to books written by fellow bloggers, I follow Thumper's philosophy: If ya can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all.  If I vehemently DO NOT LIKE a fellow blogger's book, I simply skip the review, and keep my mouth shut. Cowardly? Maybe, but why be intentionally hurtful, right? I know first-hand how much work goes into writing a book. (The downside of that is when I know someone has my book and never says beans about it, I don't know if that means that person isn't into writing reviews, or they vehemently DO NOT LIKE my work, and I should maybe consider taking my untalented butt to the nearest bridge and jumping off.)  

Abuse is often of service. There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence.  [Samuel Johnson]

Believe it or not, a writer's delight in receiving feedback doesn't end with the achievement of fame and fortune. Prolific author Joyce Carol Oates said,  A good sympathetic review is always a wonderful surprise. How about that? Even Joyce Carol Oates does a happy dance when she gets a good review. And, what's more... she's surprised. 

So, bottom line, please consider writing a review for the next book you read... it doesn't have to be fancy or long... to express your appreciation. Many writers have actually thanked me for reviews I've written, so it really does matter to them, and not just to their egos. In today's world, it also matters to their Amazon ranking. Pure and simple, the more reviews a book has on Amazon, the higher it'll move up in the rankings. Fair? Maybe not. But that's the way it goes.

Now then, I'd like to tell you about a WONDERFUL book I won through one of the Goodreads giveaways. (By the way, readers who write timely reviews for the books they win through those giveaways have a better chance of winning more of them. I've won four since the beginning of the year.)

Anyhow, this book was an utter delight to read, and (no surprise) the pictures are fantastic, too. In his fifty plus years as a news photographer, Dennis Brack's camera has captured many important moments in history, and in Presidential Picture Stories, he offers intimate background stories behind some of the photos taken by him and other White House photographers. Not only does he provide the inside scoop on the photographs and photographers, but he also provides a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at Presidents Wilson through Obama... and some of their families. If you have an interest in historical tidbits, or have a thing for photography, you'll love this book. It's a quality piece of work, and one you can be be proud to add to your library. The only reason I gave it five stars is because that's as high as the rating system goes.

I'm pleased to say that Dennis, who still covers the White House,  returned home from a trip overseas just in time to respond to a handful of questions for this post. (What a guy!)

1. So how does a photographer end up with a coveted White House assignment? Did you shoot for that goal, or was it more a matter of serendipity and being in the right place at the right time? (Oh, yeah, and of course... talent.)

Basically, how do photographers get the White House assignment.  The photographers get the assignment when they are at the top of their game. Many wire service photographers have been in critical bureaus over the years.  Quite a few have come from bureaus in the Far East.  Others have come from cities across the US and have covered political campaigns.  For example Jim Bourg who is head of Reuters photos in DC came from  Boston and covered the primaries for years before coming to town . Brooks Kraft worked for TIME in the Boston area and is now in Washington.

2. Do you think having an artistic eye for capturing memorable photographs is basically an innate talent, or can it be learned?

A good eye helps, especially on feature pictures. J. Scott Applewhite is a good example.  Scotty had covered wars for the Associated Press for decades, (Scotty and I were the two pool photographers for the first days of  the first Gulf War... a wonderful man).  Now Scotty is assigned to Capitol Hill, but often you will see a fantastic feature picture in the papers by J.Scott Applewhite.  As you can see, I am a big fan.

3. Politics aside, which president did you photographers find to be the most approachable and cooperative? Which was the least? How about the spouses?

 No politics needed.  Bush 41 would be the favorite of most  photographers who have been around for a while.  Nancy Reagan would be the favorite First Lady.  Some presidents have been more difficult to cover.  President Carter cut the press office staff by 20% which led to poor advance work and poor pictures.  I doubt if any photographer was happy during that time. 

4. Of all the photographs you've taken, is there one that stands out in your mind as your best, and of which you're most proud? Tell us about it.  

Which of my photographs is the best. Standard answer: the Pulitzer Prize winning photo that I will take tomorrow.

[HERE'S one of Dennis' photos, showing the Reagans at Normandy. Amazing, isn't it?]

5. What was your favorite travel assignment in the line of duty? The most dangerous?

 Favorite travel assignment?  I spent a month with the Nelson Rockefellers in Seal Harbour, Maine right before he was picked to be Vice President.  I was working for TIME. In August, there were never any hotel rooms so the Rockefellers let the TIME reporter and me stay in their garage. Don't worry, a Rockefeller garage is not like an ordinary garage.

 Most dangerous?  All of the riots in the sixties.

6. Anything else you'd like to add?

The picture.  We have a saying.  "F8 and be there."  Being there is the most important part.

 *******

Many thanks to Dennis for taking the time to respond to these questions. He's a pretty cool dude, huh? (SEE what neat people you can meet by writing a review...?) And thank you, Dennis, for sharing so much with us with this wonderful book.

During his illustrious career, award-winning photojournalist (and pretty cool dude) Dennis Brack has covered ten presidential administrations and a host of major news stories all around the world. Those of you who live near the Austin, Texas area can see a collection of some of his photos at the Briscoe Center at the University of Texas, because in 2012, he donated a 150,000-slide archive to the center.

[I cannot say enough good things about this book. Really. Check it out on Amazon.]

*******

Because of the Goodreads giveaway for Hot Flashes and Cold Lemonade, my book is now considerably more well-traveled than I am. To tell the truth, I had some major concerns as to whether readers in Lithuania, the Netherlands, the Philippines, and Kenya would be able to relate to the story and my weird sense of humor, but to my surprise and delight, the Kenyan gentleman who won it has already written a lovely review. So Jeremiah... thank you. I hope you win many many more books.

One last thing. For all you folks who read e-books, check out Bookbub. Once you join and answer some questions about the kinds of books you most enjoy, you'll receive a daily email from them, listing a number of reduced price and FREE books. (I must confess; I'm addicted.) Oh, if you join, it sure would be nice if you wrote a review for any books you get through them. Authors pay a good bit of money to have their books listed on there, and often offer it to readers for FREE. So what's in it for them? Reviews, reviews, reviews... and a (woo HOO!) better ranking on Amazon.

**************

He was such a bad writer, they revoked his poetic license.  [Milton Berle]

Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.  [Franklin Jones]

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.  [Christopher Hampton]

Confronted by an absolutely infuriating review it is sometimes helpful for the victim to do a little personal research on the critic. Is there any truth to the rumor that he had no formal education beyond the age of eleven? In any event, is he able to construct a simple English sentence? Do his participles dangle? When moved to lyricism, does he write, "I had a fun time."? Was he ever arrested for burglary? I don't know that you will prove anything this way, but it is perfectly harmless, and quite soothing. [Jean Kerr]

Nature fits all her children with something to do. He who would write and can't write can surely review.  [James Russell Lowell]

A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it.  [Christopher Hitchens]

From the moment I picked up your book up until I laid it down, I convulsed with laughter. Someday, I intend on reading it.  [Groucho Marx]

I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.  [Stephen Wright]

                                       
                                             So have you read any good books lately?

                                      Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.