rambling rosemarie

Before there were "GATE" programs in public schools and long before there were kids diagnosed with ADHD and strung out on Ritalin ,  there were teachers who gave kids extra assignments to keep them busy.  I had the benefit of learning from one such teacher.  She didn't know it but she gave me one of my best childhood memories when she gave me the assignment to research the building of the Golden Gate Bridge. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area and moving to Kentucky as an adult left me with ha special affinity for the bridge.  When I get home sick, I think of her.  I think of all the times I crossed her and even in my angst over city traffic or how the tolls have increased,  I was always mindful of her beauty. I used to love to take people from out of state to see her and hear them say, "It's orange, it's not gold."  On this, her 75th anniversary, I am fondly remembering the assignment given by my second grade teacher, researching the ...

I wake up every morning and take inventory of my body. I am tired of doing that but I can't help it.  Am I in pain? Am I nauseous?  Does my throat hurt? Does my voice sound funny? Will taking the pills the doctor tells me I must take make me feel better or worse?  Do I feel like I ran a marathon moments after I rise? Will light bother my eyes today? Will I have ocular migraines all day or just the one I have now? I go through my various ailments while determining if I can walk upright to the bathroom or do I need to hang on to the bed. Am I a hypochondriac? If I am, I am a good one.  Wait, I take that back. I am sporadically good.  One day I will have energy and the next day I will not.  I can't find the common denominator. I eat the same things every day. I see the same doctors. They are convinced something is going on but they don't know what.  That's not comforting except I know that they look for cancer and haven't found it.  That part ...

I could get up every day and share examples with you on why I deplore the media. The media was all over the Trayvon Martin shooting and the public jumped to conclusions. Some reporters got their 15 minutes of fame and proved the old adage, "There's a sucker born every minute."  Which, by the way, P.T. Barnum may never have said....there's evidence the media got it wrong.   Ugh! media. The media prints it, the television airs it and we, the people,  respond like marionettes having our strings pulled. Only now, now that the race card has been played and folks last nerves been stepped on, are we beginning to hear the facts.  The voice screaming for help? Likely Mr. Zimmerman's. Photographs of a bruised and swollen face?  Mr. Zimmerman's.  Cut to the back of the head? Mr. Zimmerman's. Technology, sensationalism and the lack of critical thinking skills are a dangerous combination. Young Trayvon's family are due the greatest empathy we can give them.  But ...

Sadly, I don't have a steady hand nor a tripod for my camera. If either of those things were available to me I would be posting a picture of a gorgeous Kentucky moon. It's as full and glowing gold as I have ever seen it. The sky isn't quite dark enough to have lost its purplish-blue tones and there are two or three wispy clouds framing the moon as stylishly as any custom platinum setting has ever held a precious gem. Put simply, it's stunning. The moon isn't the only sensory delight. The first fireflies of the season are doing their whimsical dance in the high grass across the street. They bring to mind those emergency lights you can wear around your neck, only the lights have a short in their circuitry and are being worn by drunks. Their flight paths are so random you have to marvel that they ever meet their objectives; find one another and make little lightning bugs. The scent of lilacs, peonies and newly mown fields have mingled with the fresh strawberries I...

January 12, 2013 will be a significant day for me. Unless something radical changes in my life, it will mark the longest time I have ever lived in one place: seven years.  That may not sound very significant to some folks but to me it is huge. Most of my life I have been an urban Bedouin.  I went to two schools in kindergarten, two schools in second grade, a different school for third through sixth grades, a different school district for seventh grade, moved in ninth grade and spent four years going to a high school that was not in my neighborhood.  For every different school or school district I was in there were probably four or five moves. Now you live with your mom, dad and half of your siblings; now you live with your mother's mother; now you live with your father's mother; now you live with your father's friends; now you're back at your grandmother's; now you're back living with your father who has married your aunt.... it was very much like being a piece ...

The trouble with childhood is that adults can't get over it, through it or help but return to it as they age. The gravitational pull toward childhood has to be greater than any black hole Stephen Hawking could conjure. Why? Why would this be such a common affliction? I could dismiss my own question by reciting a verse in 1 Corinthians , "...no temptation has overcome you except that which is common to man." I could support it by citing Ecclesiastes 1:9 , "...there is nothing new under the sun." I think there's something for me to learn in exploring the question a bit further. Could it be that we all have God given drive to return to the start? He has written His law on our hearts , does that mean an innate desire to return to beginnings? Do we long for the beginning because He is the beginning? Do we do this in error because our sin bastardizes those longings into selfish desires? None of us gets through childhood without a few scars. Some heal without n...