Lovely Lazy Day

March 13, 2021 — Pat Bertram

It rained most of the day, which was very nice because . . . well, because, for one thing, rain means it was warm enough that we didn’t get the snow so much of the state received, and that means I won’t have to spend this evening or tomorrow morning shoveling snow.

For another thing, rain means I don’t have to water my outside plants. It’s been so dry, I’ve been thinking I need to drag out my hoses to prevent everything from succumbing to the drought, but whew! I won’t have to do that chore quite yet. Even better, because of the rain, tulips from last spring that I thought were dead have managed to resuscitate themselves. I still don’t know whether I will have flowers, but the green tips peeping up from the soil are a welcome sight.

And finally, rain means that I can be lazy without having to offer excuses why I’m not out running errands, or cleaning up the yard in preparation for spring, or taking a walk, or any number of things I could be doing. Not that I would be doing these activities, you understand. It’s that I have an excuse not to do them, rather than having to face the truth of my indolence.

I started the day as I normally do, with a some stretching, picking a tarot card to study, folding a few origami cranes, reading (lots of reading!), playing a game on the computer, fixing myself a bite to eat (several bites, actually — I don’t eat much, but even I need more than a single bite for subsistence), coming up with a new password for online banking (the passwords become defunct every six months), and staring out the window at the miraculous sight of water falling from the sky.

I even caught up with a friend via telephone, and now here I am, posting to this blog.

Listing everything I’ve done suddenly makes it seem as if it wasn’t such a lazy rain day after all. But it certainly was lovely for all that.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God. 

Posted in books, life. Tags: , , , , . 5 Comments »

Truth or Taint

March 12, 2021 — Pat Bertram

After all these years of living in an e-world, I’m still not comfortable with the penchant for rating everything. Ratings do help, at times, to give me an overview of a product or service, but for the most part, the ratings don’t help me at all. I certainly have no interest in being rated myself, which is why I’ve left the ratings widget off this blog. I figure if people like what I say, they will read. If they don’t, they won’t. I learn more from comments than I would from a rating, though to me, the comments are more about a discussion than whether or not someone likes me or my blog.

Leaving off the widget doesn’t always help, since Facebook has banned my blog from their site, either because of complaints about abuse or because they have deemed it spam — I’m still not clear on what their rational was. Either way, it’s made my life a bit more difficult (though at the same time, it gives me a good excuse to remove myself from that environment).

I do like when people leave book reviews for my books since those are one of the few promotional opportunities most of us writers are given. I even occasionally read reviews, especially if I’m not sure I’d like a book and want to see what it’s about. (In that case I read the bad reviews to see what people hated about the book.)

But generally speaking, I don’t like this ratings world, and I don’t participate. Unfortunately, I recently made a mistake and when a company I had purchased a product from a year ago asked me for my opinion of the product, I sent them a quick comment. But that wasn’t enough for them. They wanted ratings. The ratings weren’t about how satisfied I was with the product, but rather if the product helped with back pain and if it improved my posture. Since I didn’t buy the product for either of those non-existent issues — I bought it for convenience since it was a side-loading pack rather than a backpack — I couldn’t give them the ratings they wanted. So now, I keep getting emails telling me I didn’t finish my review, and would I please finish it. And oh, by the way, would I also please leave a review online so their customers could see it.

I finally had enough and trashed the emails.

So, no more ratings!

All this emphasis on ratings makes me wonder if people reading the ratings are astute enough to know when a rating is legitimate rather than a paid review, and realistic enough to know that sometimes people give low ratings for personal reasons that have nothing to do with the actual product or service. Not to keep harping on the FB thing, but those who got me banned had no real basis for their displeasure since this blog is neither abuse nor spam.

It used to be that people would get mad, say their piece, and the words would dissipate into the atmosphere. Not anymore. Now those words hang around forever, tainting people and products, though admittedly sometimes it’s not a taint but the truth.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God. 

Posted in internet, life. Tags: , , , . Leave a Comment »

Grief Is Neither Simple Nor Logical

March 11, 2021 — Pat Bertram

Most people, when they think of grief, if they think of it at all, tend to believe that grievers go through a series of stages, and once each of those stages have been dealt with, the person goes back to normal. Well, at least as normal as most people are or rather as they assume they are.

But going back to normal is not feasible. The truth is, there are no stages when it comes to grief. In fact, the five stages of grief model is dangerous because it makes grief seem like a checklist, as if grief were logical, but there is no logic to grief. Grief has its own timetable, its own method, and whenever we think we understand the process, grief changes its tactics. For days, weeks, months on end, a dozen emotions will attack us all at the same time making us feel that we can never get a grip. And then, for no fathomable reason, we hit an emotional trough where we feel nothing, and we begin to think that we can handle our grief after all, and then—pow! Out of nowhere, grief returns and slams us in the gut, and we go through the whole gamut of emotional and physical symptoms again. And again. And again.

Sometimes, even years later, someone who survived the death of a spouse or other person intrinsic to their life, will be blindsided by grief. A friend, whose first husband had died more than a decade before, was happily remarried, but when the daughter she had with her first husband got married, she had a full-blown grief attack. This sort of thing makes sense to those who have experienced profound grief because any major life experience reminds us of what we lost, of what the deceased lost, and so, for a short time, we are back at the beginning when grief was new.

I haven’t been blindsided by grief for a long time, though I did have a weird bit of vertigo the other day. I was simply walking down the hall (a very short hall) when I got an awful falling-elevator feeling, and I remembered . . . again . . . that Jeff was dead. I have no idea where either the vertigo or the thought came from, except that the anniversary of his death is coming up in sixteen days, so he — and my memory of that time — are close to the front of my mind, rather in the back where they generally reside.

Perhaps some people can put the deceased entirely out of their heads, but most of us can’t, at least not all the time. They were a big part of our lives for many years, and even after they died, they were a big part of our lives through our grief, our memories, our attempts to find a new life for ourselves. Who I am today exists because he lived. Who I am today exists because he died. I have no idea who I would be if I had never met him; have no idea who I would be if we were still together. But none of that matters. I have to deal with the reality of my days, and the reality is that every once in a while, for no reason at all, grief makes itself felt.

Admittedly, this recent episode lasted only a moment or two, but such moments are important, if only to remind us that our grief is never completely finished. How can it be? No matter how much we get used to the void in our lives where they once were, the void is still there. And they are still gone.

My mission in talking about grief, to the extent I had a mission, has always been to let people know that grief is normal. Even years later, if one breaks down in tears or gets a vertigo attack or whatever manifestation grief happens to take at that moment, it’s still normal.

What isn’t normal is believing that someone’s life can be the same after the death of someone intrinsic to their life. What isn’t normal is believing that grief is simple and logical and fits into a few recognizable stages. What isn’t normal is believing that grief is easily dispatched. Well, actually, all that is normal since that’s what most people believe, but just because most people believe something, it doesn’t make that belief true or right.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Posted in grief, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 6 Comments »

Fixing the Foundation

March 10, 2021 — Pat Bertram

We’re having a spate of warm spring-like weather (complete with high winds!) in between the winter storms, so the people working on and around my house took the opportunity to fix the foundation — fill in the cracks and seal the concrete.

The foundation was white, and now it’s not. Like the original Model-T’s, I could have any color I wanted as long as it’s black. That’s the only color available for the sealer, an asphalt emulsion similar to that used to seal parking lots and roads. I wasn’t sure I’d like the dark foundation, but it really seems to define the house.

It will really look great once the ornamental rock is in place around the house. Not only will the rock be attractive, but it will further protect the foundation.

As usual, though, there is a weird problem. Nothing anyone has done around here has been easy; even a simple job turns out to be an arduous task, such as having to build a garage from scratch, rather than simply being able to fix the foundation of the old garage. (The ground under the garage was too wet to pour a foundation, in even the middle of a drought summer. We never did figure out where the moisture came from, though we did surmise the garage had been built over an old septic system.)

The current problem isn’t as drastic, but it is as mystifying. In one place on the foundation, something ate through the newly applied sealer. It looked like it could have been some sort of alkali, which would be no surprise, since the soil around here is extremely alkaline. On closer inspection, it seemed to resemble a mold. They’re going to try to putty over the mold with the same substance they’ve been using to fill in the cracks and hope that seals off whatever it is that’s eating the asphalt. It wouldn’t matter so much except that the weird spot is in the front rather than on a side where it wouldn’t be noticeable, but if it can’t be fixed, I’ll get used to it. It’s not as if this is a brand-new house (it was built in 1928), or as if the discoloration would bring down the value of the property (and if does, it’s not an issue I will have to deal with because I intend to stay here until my end if at all possible.)

It’s just nice seeing things take shape again, nice seeing work being done. And if it snows or rains later this week, well, that will be nice, too.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God. 

Posted in house, life. Tags: , , , , . Leave a Comment »

4,000 Days

March 9, 2021 — Pat Bertram

This is the 4,000th day since Jeff died. That’s a lot of days, taken one at a time.

I never used to count days or months or years. Well, my birthday, that’s the one count we all make, though after I reached adulthood, the number of years I’d lived became a curiosity rather than celebration, a number to acknowledge and then move on.

After Jeff died, counting became a part of my life, of my grief. Surprisingly, I’m not the only one who counted the days; most of us who have been left behind count at least for a while.

When we lose a significant person in our life, one whose death rocks us to the very depths of our being and changes us forever, it’s as if we are born into a world of grief, and our internal clocks reset themselves to that moment of birth.

At first, we count the minutes and hours we’ve lived, then after we’ve survived twenty-four or forty-eight interminable and interminably painful hours, we being counting the days. Eventually we move on to counting weeks, months, years, and even decades. To the uninitiated, this counting seems as if we’re dwelling on the past, constantly reminding ourselves of our sorrow, but the truth is, counting is a way of helping us survive this new, alien world.

Grief distorts time. Sometimes it feels as if time stops, but simultaneously it feels as if it speeds up. Seconds seem like hours. Hours can feel like days or pass by in seconds. We lose track of what the date is. The past and future might become so entwined that we can’t always be sure if we’re going forward or backward. A particularly strong flashback to the days before our loved one died can make it seem as they are still alive, in another room perhaps. An especially serene moment between grief upsurges can catapult us to a future world of possibility, a world without pain. Counting the days helps put time back into perspective.

Mentioning that this is the 4,000th day makes it seem as if I am still counting, but the truth is, I stopped counting days, weeks, and months, a long time ago, though I still count the years. (On March 27, it will be eleven years.) During research on another matter, I came across the number 4,000 and I put in on my calendar, otherwise this day would have passed without a comment. And maybe it should have. After all, what difference does it make how many days he’s been gone? He’s gone, and no amount of counting will change that.

Still, I did survive all those days, too many of which were pain-filled and angst-ridden, so that’s something worth acknowledging, I suppose.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Posted in grief, life. Tags: , , , , , . 11 Comments »

Workers!

March 8, 2021 — Pat Bertram

I had a lovely surprise today. I heard scrabbling noises around my house, and when I went out to see what was going on, I found a worker preparing the cracks in the foundation so he could fill them in. He’ll have to let the filler harden, and then he’ll come back and paint the foundation with a sealer. The sealer is black, which I’m not sure I’ll like. If not, I can paint over it with a lighter color. Or I could wait until I got used to it.

But that’s an issue for another day. Today, I am delighted to see progress being made.

It’s funny how so often, one job depends upon another, sort of like a reverse of the nursery rhyme “The House that Jack Built.” The workers have rock to put around the house, but they can’t do that until the they put down the weed barrier, and they can’t put down the weed barrier until they build up the dirt around the house, and they can’t build up the dirt around the house until they seal the foundation, and they can’t seal the foundation until they fill in the cracks, and they can’t fill in the cracks until they dig out the dirt that’s around the foundation.

Luckily, I’m not the one having to do all this, and the person who is doing it doesn’t seem to mind the work.

Even luckier, the weather should hold for a few days until the filler has cured. It’s one of those projects that can’t be done in cold weather because the concrete filler would disintegrate, and all that work would go for naught.

[An interesting aside; interesting to me, anyway. Seeing the word “naught” made me wonder how it was related to the word naughty, since the two words don’t have much in common, and it turns out that “naughty” does come from “naught.” Apparently, in the fourteenth century, naughty referred to a person lacking in wealth, and over the years, came to mean someone lacking in morals. Does that mean back then that the poor were considered bad, perhaps poor because they were bad, as people so often surmise even today?]

But, neither naught or naughty have anything to do with the matter at hand, which is . . . workers (at least one, anyway) are here working!

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God. 

Posted in house, life. Tags: , , , , . 4 Comments »

Happy House Anniversary to Me!

March 7, 2021 — Pat Bertram

Today is the second anniversary of my being a home owner. The anniversary of when I first saw the house won’t be for another couple of days and will require yet another celebration. Today, though, is about the house.

I bought the house sight unseen, though I had viewed photos online. Oddly, I didn’t particularly care one way or the other about the outside of the house, though people who saw the photos all told me how cute it was and how it looked like me. I was more interested in the new kitchen, the walk-in shower with hand bars, the plethora of windows. Despite that, I have been eminently pleased with the house itself — the spooky basement and the now defunct garage not so much, but both those disappointments have been turned into . . . whatever the opposite of disappointment is. It should be “appointment,” shouldn’t it? Since it’s not, I’ll have to go with “satisfaction.”

Though the basement still needs some work, mostly cosmetic, such as paint, it’s not the spooky place it was at the beginning. If I had known I would only go down those stairs a few times a year to replace the furnace filter, I might not have gone to the expense, but it still makes me feel good to know it’s just a basement, not a horror show.

And the new garage, of course, is wonderful, functional, and attractive. It certainly adds to the joy of home ownership.

I never wanted to own a house. It seemed too much of a responsibility. The first time I ever saw the possibilities in owning a place was when I visited my sister a few years ago. Her house is a delight, with art and artifacts and artful displays wherever I would look. But even so, I didn’t want to own, which was good since there was no way I could ever have afforded to buy a place. At least, not then. The years passed and, as luck would have it, a house showed up in my life.

It has all worked out so much better than I could ever have imagined. Not only do I love my house, I love owning it. It makes me feel good, as if I were wearing a warm cloak on a cold day.

Adding to the luck, the town that came with the house has been a good place for me, complete with a nearby library . . . and friends.

There were several very long years where I thought I would never be happy again. There were other times I knew something wonderful would be in my future — since the universe is balance, I figured only something really special could offset the pain of losing Jeff and the horror of grief.

In twenty days, it will be eleven years that he’s been gone, and not only did I find happiness again, I found the “something wonderful.”

Last year, on the first anniversary, a friend wrote, “Happy house anniversary, Pat. And happy Pat anniversary, house. You make a great couple! Perfect together.” And we are perfect together. Other people sometimes suffer a bout of buyer’s remorse, but not me. I knew this was my house from the first time I saw photos of the place on the real estate site.

So today, I celebrate me and the house. Together.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Posted in home, house, life. Tags: , , , , , . 6 Comments »

If Doomsday Comes

March 6, 2021 — Pat Bertram

I just finished reading a book where all technology, including power grids, were knocked out by a coronal mass ejection from the sun. Checking on the possibility of such a catastrophe, I learned that “scientists,” whatever that means, are concerned about such a possibility, and are trying to create systems that can withstand such powerful ejections from the sun.

Oddly, humans are not affected by any of these CME’s. Supposedly, if we are standing on Earth, within Earth’s atmosphere, we are protected. So if we were to be subjected to CMEs powerful enough to destroy technology, we would be safe. Safe from the sun’s emissions, that is. Not safe from each other.

You’d think that in a worldwide crisis, people would come together with a one-for-all and all-for-one attitude, but I don’t see it. In any emergency, there will be people who look for ways to help, and those who look for ways to capitalize on the mess.

Because of The Bob, and the resulting shortages, and because of the arctic blast we were subjected to, and various other emergencies, you’d think I’d be more concerned about stocking up, but I just don’t seem to see the point. If there were something that would knock out the power grids, the media, transportation, availability of food, gas, and supplies, there’s no amount of things I could stockpile that would get me through months, even a year, of deprivation. It’s a physical impossibility.

Mostly, I don’t care. I’ve lived through a lot of crises that didn’t actually happen. Too often, news folk and politicians titillated us with possible doomsday scenarios that went nowhere. Even with The Bob, even considering as many problems as there were, the end result was nothing like the original projection of 80% of people on earth dying from the disease. (It’s this projection that panicked the various politicians and made them close down cities and towns. I’m not sure what they would have done if they had been given a truthful scenario. Probably shrugged their shoulders and continued as usual. Unless, of course, their reelection was at stake; then we’d hear from them.)

I suppose if I really believed in a massive doomsday rather than a personal one (after all, each of us does have a personal doomsday in our future), I might be more concerned, but even then, I’m not sure what I could do. I am set up for a week, maybe two. I have camping equipment, including a solar cell phone charger, that would help make things easier, but beyond that? I’m not sure it’s worth it. Do I really want to survive in a society that basically has to start over? That’s assuming I could survive. If I had stocked up on anything, chances are, someone with guns and a driving need for survival at all costs would have taken them from me.

I’m sure I’ve talked about this same subject — survival — too many times, but it’s one that seems to come up again and again, either in books, on the news, or even in conversations with people.

If I were young, perhaps I would feel differently, but from what I remember back in cold war years, nuclear threats, Asian flu and swine flu seasons, terrorist attacks, and all the rest of it, I didn’t feel any differently.

Then again, who knows. None of us truly knows how we will act when doomsday comes. Perhaps I will be the one with a shotgun, desperately running around stealing people’s carefully hoarded stocks.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God. 

Posted in books, life. Tags: , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Becoming the Matriarch

March 5, 2021 — Pat Bertram

Getting old is a weird thing. When you’re very young, the old seem to be a fixture; after all, you never saw them when they were young. As far as you know, they were always old. Oh, you do see photos, perhaps, but those photos seem to have little to do with the old folks in your life. All you really know is that you are young and they are old.

In fact, it often seems as if they were born old, as if old is what they were supposed to be, when the truth is, you were born young. Still, despite what we learn of history, whether our personal history or world history, it seems as if the world begins when we are born.

As time goes on, we do get a sense of the progression of life. We grow older, learn to walk and talk, and eventually we go to school. Sometimes we get younger brothers and sisters, and we are puffed up with our oldness. We try so hard to grow up, especially if we have an older sibling, because we want to be as old as they are. We want their privileges, such as they are. And then, the big birthday comes, and even though we are a year older, so is the sibling.

And so the years pass.

Then one day you wake to the realization that you are the old generation. In the back of your mind there’s still the image of the world you were born into, where you were young and the old were old. So how is it possible that the world has suddenly become inverted?

After Jeff died, I was afraid of growing old alone, but now I’ve gotten used to the idea, and although the thought of being old doesn’t worry me, being old and feeble does. Luckily, I have been able to bypass the feebleness for now (though with my wonky knees, sometimes I sense a less than active future).

I am confused, though. How can I be the matriarch of my family — the oldest living female? There are cousins somewhere who are older than I am, but for the most part, everyone who is older than me — parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, older brother — are all gone now.

And I am now that old woman who so mystified me when I was young.

To be honest, many of my youthful years seem to have disappeared, not just out of sight but out of mind, so perhaps the truth is what I once sensed about other elders — that I am a fixture; that I did in fact appear on this earth as an old woman. And there’s no one who was alive when I was born to tell me otherwise.

With any luck, I will continue to grow older, and if enough years pass, I will look back to this time as a relatively youthful one. The ninety-year old woman I sit with says I am just a kid, so perhaps I really am still relatively youthful.

But none of that mitigates the very real fact that I am not only the oldest living female in my family, I’m also the oldest of anyone, male or female.

Does this blog post have a purpose? None that I can see. It’s just that once I was so young that everyone in my family (and the world, too!) was older than I was. And now?

Maybe it’s best if I stop thinking about this.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God. 

Posted in being me, dealing with old age, life. Tags: , , , , . 5 Comments »

Feels Like Home

March 4, 2021 — Pat Bertram

Someone asked me today if it were a cultural shock for me living here in this rural corner of the state after growing up in Denver. I told her that it felt the same, that it felt like home. If I had moved here directly from Denver, it might be a different matter, but I left Denver when too many people from out of the state moved in and immediately tried to change the slow-moving town to a great city. When I was growing up, Denver was a cowtown without a skyline, and fabulous views of the mountains from wherever I stood. Each neighborhood was a town in itself, with churches, schools, stores, a library, all within walking distance. The political bent was . . . well, there was no bend; beliefs seemed to hover right about in the middle. People tended to vote their beliefs rather than follow the party, and overall, it seemed to be centrist. There was some crime and some poorer neighborhoods, but there were no gangs or gang-related activities.

Then came the California invasions. Now Denver is indistinguishable from other major cities, with gangs galore, horrendous social problems, outrageous real estate prices, an agenda the rest of the state has a hard time dealing with, and no autonomous neighborhoods.

I am grateful to be out of that mess, grateful to have found a place that feels like home, that feels like the neighborhood “town” I came from.

The conversation, however, made me wonder why people leave an area they are dissatisfied with and immediately try to change their new location to mimic the old one. Although this is the current problem with a lot of immigrants — people want to change the laws in this country to make it more like the place they came from — it’s also a problem when large numbers of people move from one state to another.

I blame Californians for the change, but New Yorkers cause just as many problems in some areas. In fact, someone from New York recently moved here and is trying to steer this town toward being more of an artist’s colony like Taos rather than accepting it for what it is — a quiet, rather impoverished though congenial town with a lot to offer as it stands today.

I know people prefer what they are familiar with, but migrators — either internal or international — generally leave to go to a new place in search of a better life, so why try to make the new way like the old?

This isn’t simply a problem from state to state, but also from one area to another within a state. I spent some years in the high desert of California, across the mountains from the Los Angeles sprawl. At one time, it was a quiet place, but the state tried to break up the big-city gangs by getting families to relocate to the desert. Now, the place is rife with gang-related troubles, including drugs and crime.

It’s as if they (whoever “they” are) want to turn the whole world into a cesspool. Migrators seem to go along with this agenda because they believe in the rightness of their cause and the wrongness of people who want to live their lives by their own religious beliefs rather than the political beliefs of others. It’s not a surprise there are problems; there always are when the rights of the few are given precedence over the rights of the many.

But I’m migrating away from the topic of this blog. Mostly I’m trying to understand the mentality of those who leave one horrible area and immediately try to change their new environment into an equal horror rather than trying to fit in with the local culture. Though I suppose the truth is they don’t think of the change as horror. Nor do they see anything wrong with what they are doing. Many such immigrants I’ve met have a touch of arrogance about them, as if they thought they were bringing light to a dark area, and never realize they could be a dark bringer instead.

Luckily, this place is small enough and rural enough and independently-minded enough that it will be years before it’s changed all out of recognition. Luckily too, if it’s changed faster than I think it will be, I have my own place — my own personal gated place — and within this enclosure, I can still be at home no matter what goes on outside the fence.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God. 

Posted in culture, home, life. Tags: , , , , , . 6 Comments »
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