Talent children, dog, and a daddy

God hands out talent. Is there a standard issue? Does every preschool child perform with such enthusiasm? Have you ever listened to a child's performance and smiled so big?

 

 

 

 

cats

 

 Preschool/Kindergarten children

daddy with his girls

 

 

Emilio Piano with 3 yr. old Angelica

Children speak their minds, good or bad. Children have an honest talent and often have no idea if they are on key, whatever.. They enjoy themselves. They perform for those who are watching.

 

Oh to be so young again!

Toddlers are honest.

 

Pinterest

 The best comedians in the world are small and sweet, without an agenda.

They say what they are thinking, no matter how inappropriate.  Their thought processes are increasing, one synapse at a time.

 Being a good daddy

Pinterest

Pinterest

Pinterest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Stuff like this make me giggle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Truth, the Absolute Truth

Truth is truth.  Words can be twisted and distorted, but truth is literally out there to see, looking us right in the eyes.

 This video is about 10 minutes long.  There are all sorts of parents catching kids doing something, who then deny they have done anything, anything at all. Scroll through it, relive your own moments of denial in the face of absolute evidence.

 

Do you gerrymander?

 

                                    One person, one vote

So far, we have had Twitter, Tweet, Facebook, and perhaps-more big industries-to-come. Google? Their business practices came back to bite them and their days of revealing, deleting, gerrymandering  (an interesting word and meaning) I have never understood. The definition is a silent, quiet word, one that isn’t tossed around casually. Why, I wonder.

[ˌjerēˈmandəriNG]

NOUN

gerrymandering (noun) · jerrymandering (noun)

1. the manipulation of an electoral constituency's boundaries so as to favor one party or class:

"gerrymandering protects the party lines and keeps bad incumbents in power"

ORIGIN

early 19th century: from gerrymander + -ing.

Here are some synonyms:

 manipulating, cheating, pettifoggery, rigging, corruption, falsifying, manipulation, fraud, and more.

What struck me is that there are no synonyms below, just antonyms:

honor, oath, justice, integrity, honesty, sincerity, truth, and more.

Basically, being called a gerrymander is a negative thing as part of its meaning.

Being called truthful is a positive thing as part of it definition.

Are you a gerrymander or honest? Pettifoggery or sincerity? Manipulate or guide? 

https://libraries.uta.edu/ettahulme/image/20111236

Struggles with the Past

Writing memories of stories told to me by my father is an almost

Mom's senior high school photo

easy delight. Experiencing those stories as if Dad himself were there beside me fills me with a warm satisfaction; those stories will not disappear when I do.

My last post on Susan Kane, Writer is a true to the images what Dad told me more than once. He always said that a good tale can be told over and over. This last post was one tale Dad told me which had me laughing each time, Gift, Freely Given.

My mother never told these detailed stories, ever. Instead, she talked with us as we worked with her. We would be washing dishes and she would have us laughing at some event from her youth.  A small event, like going to dances at her high school when she was sixteen, would have my sister and me in stitches.  

Mom in High School

Mom was vivacious. Mom loved people and they remembered her for her kindness and enthusiasm. Mom was born in 1928, part of the Greatest Generation. Mom grew up on a farm. Mom was a cheerleader and played the flute in HS. Mom did...

But there was no connection from one situation to one part to the next, just free-flowing.

Baby brother Donald with Mom and Dad, 1947

How do I weave those brief memories into a picture of who my mother was and how did those parts make her who she was?

As writers, what do you do with characters about whom you have to build around, to construct with pieces of understanding?  How honest do you have to be when this is a telling of someone like my mom? And keep the story true and solid?

How do I keep my voice accurate in trying portraying their voice?  Her voice.  Do I try to create a new persona for Mom?

Also, what do I do to be true to the character when their persona has flaws? In my Aunt Helen, her voice includes profanity.  In real life, Aunt Helen did not do this.  However, she held onto the anger of her growing-up years for her entire life. Her photos show that. So, I endowed her with inward profane dialogue. 

If I had that anger, what would I do to release it? What would you do with this way to express the character's anger?

So there you have it. And here I ask you: What do I do? What can I do? What would you do?

If this post leaves you confused, please check the post site in yellow above.

Life is a fast ride.

source

January is hitting its stride and that makes me realize that this year, 2018, will slide to December 31st too quickly. In fact, old sledding hills have now become ski jumps covered with black ice.

When did this happen? What should I do during 2018 acceleration?

Obviously, nothing can be done to slow time down. It is what it is.

What we all must do is to examine and activate these most necessary requirements: Gratitude, Faithfulness, and Honesty. Why these, you may ask. These three weave through all aspects of living, encompassing our entire existence.

Gratitude may be silent in most lives.  What we have now is not of our own doing at all, because this has been gifted to us by God.  Yes, everyone has had to work for everything, no doubt about that. The difference is that our drive is nailed into our DNA, into our thought processes.  This is part of who we are. And this comes from God.

Be grateful and give thanks.

Be faithful in all things.  When we are faithful to who we are and what we believe, when we are faithful to those we love, and when we are faithful to paths and goals laid out before us, life moves along. Faith gives all the strength needed.

Be faithful and hold onto your faith.

Honesty. This is huge.  It is not just telling the truth to those around us, it is about being honest with ourselves. Admit it, we would like to believe that we will finish the garage cleanup in one afternoon dictated by someone in the family, we know that is pie in the sky.  Be honest. Look at the mirror and see that 50 pounds will not drop off in one year.

Honesty is a personal attribute, to be developed personally. Others wrestling with honesty have nothing to do with the honesty in your own life.

Be honest to yourself and those around you.

Gratitude, Faithfulness, and Honesty are daily goals and always a work in process.  Fasten your skis and grip your poles because life is a fast ride.

H is for Honesty

Honesty

We have two delightful grand-daughters.  Only eighteen months apart, they are both friends and sisters. They are so very different from each other.

"Red Queen" is studious and an awful liar who always confesses.  "Alice" is a butterfly and an unrepentant liar. 

That is why this event tickled and surprised us.  We had picked the girls up from school and were driving to their house.

“Grandpa, you’d better move this big folder here…Why, honey?.

“Well, if you don’t, I’ll look at it and it’ll distract me, and then”….Then what?

“Then I’ll pick it up, and then I’ll open it, and then…Alice, why are you crying?

“I’ll open it up, I’ll take out the papers,

 I’ll fold them and tear them…” Sweet baby…

She sobbed more.  ”When we get out of the car, you’ll ask me if I played with your papers, and I’ll say No I Didn’t, and then you will say Tell The Truth, and then I’ll say I Am Telling The Truth…”

By the time we walked into the house, Alice was in fully crying mode.  “I’ll go to my room…”  She stomped up the stairs and we heard the door slam.

The folder was intact in the car, with sobs echoing down upon it.

The Red Queen of Hearts and Alice 

Yellow Sky

Source:costiq

Dan watched a mustard yellow sky and listened as sounds of birds silenced.  Rain had been pelting grain fields hard the past few hours with wind sweeping across the farm.

He had always been known for his honesty and degree of readiness in storms like this.  The last time the sky was yellow and the air heavy, Dan recalled how specific he had been about getting the family to safety, telling them what to do when the tornado touched down. 

Back then the funnel had lifted his heaviest truck and ripped the bottom carriage right off, flinging it to the neighboring farm.  Tornadoes flagrantly pass through, shredding a life’s work in a matter of seconds.

Dan watched for Jenny and the kids, praying for them to be safe.  As he headed to the shelter, the old Toyota tore into the drive.  “Now!  Get in now!”

Dan wrapped his arms around Jenny and his children in the shelter as the roaring monster touched down.  “Safe. Safe…” They all prayed.

Source: Photonut

Many thanks to Delores @Under the Porch Light  for her challenging words.  Please please please check her site for other participants in her Wednesday Words.

Tornadoes are horrific terribly destructive monsters of nature.  Many fellow bloggers have been affected by them.  Always pray for those in the path of a tornado.

The Fairy House

The fairy house was finally complete.  It was a magnum opus when it came to projects-done-with-small-children.  We started with grand plans; we had watched “TinkerBell and the Great Fairy Rescue”, and had a vision.  Unfortunately, the visions of young granddaughters and their ‘just a little bit old’ grandmother were not the same.

I knew immediately, after the dog-poop complication (refer to “Clap! Clap your hands!”), whatever aspirations I had of a cute fairy-style villa were just not going to happen.  The bits of paper on the floor confirmed that conclusion.  The fairy house was put aside for about two weeks, while I recovered from a bad cold, and deeply held aversion to the memory of the dog do-do.   When I put the house back on the kitchen table, it was with a determination that was akin to completing a black-ops mission. 

The girls were excited, and they got those scissors going, while I scouted through the house for anything, anything at all, that would make this house have some glamor to it.  I mean, aside from the Disney-cute box, all the work we had done looked for all the world like I had dotted the thing with glue and held it behind a wood chipper.  I came back to the table with some empty toilet paper rolls, a few bright ribbons left over from Christmas, and assorted broken barrettes.

It all came together in a rush.  The girls got distracted with a new educational game on the old Mac, Mommy came home, and I scooped up all the destruction on the floor.  It was raining buckets, so we couldn’t take it outside.  Mommy put the now-glamorized house back in its old resting spot until it was a drier day.

Well, today when I was with my girls, the house had been out in its fairy-enticing spot in a tube of the play structure for about a week.  Cautiously, we tiptoed out to the fairy house, whispering & hushing all the way. We looked the fairy house over, looking for clues—any clues—that fairies had been visiting.  Maybe they had slept in the bed?  Maybe they used the coffee table?  The girls searched my face for my grown-up assessment of the state of the house:  occupied or unoccupied.

Liar, I am such a liar.  God forgive me, please.  But, looking at those earnest faces, how could I not say, “Well, I do believe that the fairies have been here!  Yes, indeed.  It looks like they have moved some things around…”  The girls ran back into the house, whooping and hollering, “Grandpa!  Grandpa!  The fairies were there, in our house!...”

If any fairies had been around at that point, I am certain, without a shadow of a doubt, that they would spend tonight there on the bed made from some tissues and parts of a shoebox.