Vampires Tapping on Your Window-It’s Halloween Season Again

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“At three in the morning the blood runs slow and thick, and slumber is heavy. The soul either sleeps in blessed ignorance of such an hour or gazes about itself in utter despair. There is no middle ground.”
― Stephen King, ‘Salem’s Lot

It was three in the morning, the real witching hour according to many theologians and historians. It is “inverse” time to when Christ was crucified. Therefore, it is the time when evil loves to play. Witches, ghouls, demons, and the like having a chilling fun time. What about vampires? What is that tapping?

I awoke to a tapping on my bedroom window. It was spring, a late Saturday night or an early Sunday morning in the mid to late Seventies…the year, not the temperature. I awoke with goosebumps chasing themselves up and down my spine. It was the witching hour.

I don’t know why I remember certain things like it was “a Saturday night in the mid to late Seventies.”  Dateless and alone on a Saturday night? Sam Cooke’s “Another Saturday Night” plays in the background of my memory.

I had discovered Stephen King and was reading ’Salem’s Lot” to while away the alone time. One should never read Stephen King while alone and in the middle of the night. For those of you who are unfamiliar with ‘Salem’s Lot, it is a vampire yarn featuring bloodsuckers taking over an entire town. I assume everyone is familiar with Stephen King.

I love good scary yarns. Vampires and any book by King seem to be my favorites although I won’t turn down a good Zombie apocalypse or end of world scenario. The Walking Dead? Sure, and it isn’t even King. I also love Halloween season because it takes advantage of the horror genre, and I can usually find an old horror film to get a good dose of fear…unless I’ve seen it a dozen times or so.

‘Salem’s Lot besides being scary as hell, has an instructional section devoted to…vampire protocols. The section went farther than I must sleep in a casket on a bed of home soil, I risk a bad sunburn if I appear before dark and to maintain my immortality I must feed on virginal blood and stay away from sharp, pointed stakes.

Just before I had decided to call it a night, I read that a vampire couldn’t come into your home unless you invited them in. That was why I was awake. I had heard, TAP, TAP, TAP on the window next to my bed.

Alone, with no one to run to or call, I’m hearing a TAP, TAP, TAP on the window of my apartment bedroom. My second-floor apartment bedroom…just hours after reading how “little vampire Johnny” had hypnotized his little brother to open a second story window and invite him in. You just can’t trust a vampire or a little brother.

“Whatever you do… DON’T LOOK THEM IN THEIR LITTLE VAMPIRE EYES!” That’s how they hypnotize you…and I heard it again…TAP, TAP, TAP. I could imagine his little vampire fingers…those tiny, gray, blood drained fingers. I imagined his big vampire smile, lips stained with blood surrounding sharp little fangs…mouthing…” Come on man! Just invite me in, it won’t sting…much.”  TAP, TAP, TAP. Sorry little vampire guy, this ain’t a McMiller’s drive-thru window.

There was a breeze churned up by a distant thunderstorm…, “it was a dark and stormy night” …and the window was cracked enough to take advantage of the spring coolness…the breeze was moving the curtains…” DON’T LOOK! DON’T LOOK!”

Thunder rumbled in the distance…” DON’T LOOK! DON’T LOOK!” A gust of wind moved the curtains. I didn’t look…I slept with the lights on and the covers over my head. A grown man sleeping with the lights on with covers over his head…it was a grown man NOT sleeping but with the lights on and the covers over his head.

The next morning, as soon as the sun was FULLY above the horizon, I went out, all bleary-eyed, hoping to see that what had caused the TAP, TAP, TAP was not a vampire. I was met by the Doberman Pincher from the apartment below. Placing her paws on my shoulders while looking me in the eyes, she pinned me to the wall assuring me it wasn’t her. Her master explained, “She’s in heat and a bit jumpy.” I would agree. I’m jumpy but not in heat.

It was the tree…a water oak. A little branch just close enough to tap, tap, tap in the wind…or was it? No, I ain’t fallin’ for it. Why take the chance?  Where is my crucifix?  Do I have a clove of garlic?

For more of Don Miller’s whacky rantings, please go to his author’s page at http://amazon.com/author/cigarman501.

Note: From the https://paranormalauthority.com

“Many theologians suggest the true witching hour takes place between 3 and 4 AM. In traditional Christianity, canonical hours, or regularly intervaled prayers, were held in strict observance, save for that one, now infamous, hour. Over time, this period of the night became associated with unsavory activities and supernatural beings. Anyone caught lurking out of doors around 3 AM was often accused of witchcraft, and devil worship.

Most historians also agree that the witching hour was most likely linked to 3 AM, due to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It is believed that Jesus perished around three in the afternoon, rendering 3 AM an inversion of that time. In short, any demonic or supernatural activity that occurs at that time is a mockery of the Christian faith.”

Of Dung Beetles and Other Seriousness

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“Quit complaining about life’s burdens, a dung beetle carries up 1000 times its own body weight.”
― Anoir Ou-Chad

The things you think about while embraced by the silence….

She has finally gone to sleep…sitting in her infusion chair. Neither of us sleep well the night before her infusions. Her infusion chair looks comfortable, my chair is anything but. No nap for me. There are many of us sitting in uncomfortable chairs supporting friends and family, all hooked up to infusions of “hope.” All of us are uncomfortable in our chairs and our thoughts.

This is Linda’s chemo treatment number three of six. I understand why she has a difficult night but wonder why I’m having a sympathetic reaction. I will usually sleep through almost anything. All night I dealt with intrusive dreams. Minor dealings compared to hers but major to me.

I sit with her as she gets her five hours of liquid “hope”. She picks a room with a view instead of a room with a TV. I sit with my back to the wide windows watching her watch the wind move tree limbs until she falls asleep. Linda can’t tolerate the chatter of TV or radio for some reason, and I am having a problem dealing with the silence.

I do have a computer to provide a bit of noise over my pods and just watched a YouTube video of a dung beetle hard at work. It was an accident. I didn’t just Google or YouTube “Dung Beetle” but once I saw the preview I was hooked and watched several videos. They are hypnotic.

The video was of a dung beetle hard at work. What kind of work does a dung beetle do? They roll small balls of poop into large balls of poop and then feed off them or use them as a breeding chamber. Breeding chamber? Barry White croons in a deep baritone, “I can’t get enough of your love baby.” I think in a high screech, “Hey baby, want to come check out my big ole ball of poop?”

There must be some kind of lesson here, I’m just too groggy to figure out what it might be. “A water buffalo’s poop is a dung beetles cabana?” That wasn’t even funny in my head, I don’t know why I decided to go ahead and add it.

Amazing fact. There are three types of dung beetles, mine is called a “roller” for obvious reasons. “Rollers” can roll up over 250 times their mass in one night and bury it to be feasted upon later. Amazingly, all this demanding work is done with their rear legs while standing on their head. I wonder if female dung beetles are impressed by the size of their paramour’s balls? Of poop. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Obviously, watching videos about dung beetles is not about dung beetles. It’s about not thinking about my sleeping bride who is battling cancer. I clutch every time I think or say the word. It is as if I don’t say it, it might not be true. But then, I see her softened face as she sleeps through her infusion, liquid hope running into her veins.

I wonder what kind of devils run through her mind. I’m sure she has her intrusive thoughts. When we talk, our focus tends to be more about the “hope.” The blood panels have come back good. Cancer antigens have gone down after every infusion but in the back of my mind I worry that the cosmic Big Guy is going to snatch the rug out from under us.

Dung beetles don’t seem to worry. They are perfectly happy to roll up poop balls all day long. I don’t want to trade my life for that of a dung beetle but there is something to be said about a lack of worry.

Historical

Ancient Egyptians held dung beetles in high regard. The “sacred scarab” was in fact a dung beetle.

Update

As I said before, we are halfway, completing chemo treatment number three. She is wired on the steroids that are included in chemo and I can’t help but wonder when the energizer bunny will wind down. She slept not a wink last night and I feel guilty that I did.

Her cancer antigens have continued to drop but her side effects have continued to escalate. There is a tradeoff there, I’m sure. Despite the pain she is optimistic.

Again, thanks for your prayers and comments of encouragement.

Don Miller doesn’t just write about dung beetles. He has published several books, fiction, and nonfiction. They can be purchased or downloaded at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Searching For My Generation Gap

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“Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.” – George Orwell

I’m a Boomer and I don’t say that with much pride these days. I have joined a few Facebook sites touting Sixties and Seventies music, fashion, lifestyle, culture, etc. The “free love” Sixties are not immune from inflamed politics or the lamentation for “the good old days.” What happened to the “first” “Me Generation?”

Why have we, the Boomers, become so judgmental, so jaded? What did we do to become the end all adjudicators for societal judgement? I mean, we invented the term “generation gap.” What happened?

We once put a premium on thinking outside of the box. We were the epitome of non-conformity. We were going to go out and change the world and we did. Boomers did some amazing things…and then sat back on their laurels and bitched and moaned, “What happened to our youth, no manners, no work ethic, yada, yada, yada?”

We allowed the world to beat us down, turning us into our parents, and now we want to make sure our future generations get beaten down too by pointing out all their failures when we are the ones who raised them. I hope these new generations will save us from ourselves or will at least save themselves from us. We need a little Sixties-style nonconformity.

Am I looking through rose-colored glasses at the past? Newberry College in 1968-1973 was not a liberal baston of “wokeness” despite being a “liberal arts” college. I mean it was in South Carolina, a conservative baston and a champion of the “Lost Cause”.

I remember plenty of folk who did not toe the expected line. We weren’t all about panty raids, Purple Jesus, and singing “Dixie” or “Hail to the Redskins” at football games. (The Newberry College mascot was once “The Indians” and not “The Wolves.”)

I remember people who not only colored outside of the box but tore the box up and used it for kindling to start a fire in one of the outside entrances to Brokaw Hall. It wasn’t willful destruction. They picked the safest place to start a fire so they could broadcast the “Fish Cheer” from their dorm windows to the powers that were gathered outside. I’m not sure the Dean of Men ever recovered. I know, there were bigger war protests at certain “left” coast institutions of higher learning, but we did have them and only had a student body of eight hundred or so.

What happened to us? We came of age during a decade of protests, primarily centering on an unjust civil right of segregation and an unjust war fought in Viet Nam. Church, state, and parents were all called into question and found wanting by us…and now we have become them…or at least the most vocal have.

My research has given me some insight. The Boomers are not monolithic, nor are the Generation Xers or Millennials we raised. Those Boomers who were born closer to the end of WW II tend to be more liberal than those born in the later period. Interesting but I digress.

We utter the same battle cry our parents did. “That’s socialism” or “that’s Marxism” anytime anything is done to try and help people other than those at the top of the food chain. Helping those on the lower end of the food chain is not socialism. Socialism is, “a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.”

The last time I looked, “the means of production, distribution, and exchange” is still in the hands of the owners of said means of production, distribution, and exchange; ergo, not socialism.

The fact is we “sold out” during the 1980s and became part of the materialist, consumer culture. We became members of Reagan’s “moral majority” which was anything but moral as far as treatment of people. Remember the beginning of the AIDS epidemic? It was “hurrah for me and the hell with everyone else.” “Trickle down” only happens with rain…or “the man” pissing on our heads.

For those of us who might have championed capitalism we should have learned how corrosive capitalism can be when unaccompanied by a counterbalancing belief of moral restraint. When did our 1968 idealism turn into materialism? When did we become so pontificated against the generations that we raised?

We judge the new generations as being lazy, without morals, or taste. We had the best fashion, the best cars, the best music, we say. We forget about the class struggles, the war, and civil rights assassinations and riots. This fictional world is no longer our oyster…nor is it Generation Xers. We taught you too well to be just like us.

One of the tasks for those who succeed the Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials is to restore some good old fashioned, 1968 idealism. The great challenge of this moment is the crisis of isolation and fragmentation, the need to rebind the fabric of a society that has been torn by selfishness, cynicism, distrust, and autocracy created by my generation. Good luck. You have a huge job ahead of you.

Please follow Don Miller at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

“Quare” Birds

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“Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.”

― Attributed to Morticia Addams, it is a quote by Charles Addams, creator of the characters who became The Addams Family. I guess Morticia could be considered his daughter since he created her.

Once Southerners knew how to deal with folks who were a half bubble off plumb. Most were viewed humorously and talked about with a twinkle in one’s eye. They were “quare which simply meant they were a little crazy, giddy, or off kilter when compared to accepted societal norms. Many were gifted in ways we don’t understand as well but as I have grown to understand, normal doesn’t exist.

Designing Women’s Julia Sugarbaker summed it up this way, “We, here in the South, don’t hide our crazy relatives up in the attic; we bring them downstairs and show them off.” We even had cute ways to refer to them, “their cornbread ain’t quite done in the middle.”

It seems we have recently created more chaos for us flies by labeling anything or anyone we disagree with as being “not” normal if not downright abnormal to the point of criminality. This is a disservice to those of us who have not stepped over the line to wearing tin foil hats but are a bit odd…the fruitcakes Jimmy Buffett sang about. The weird, the odd, those with a screw loose.

“Fruitcakes in the kitchen, fruitcakes on the street. Struttin’ naked through the crosswalk in the middle of the week. Half-baked cookies in the oven, half-baked people on the bus. There’s a little bit of fruitcake left in every one of us.”

I’ve written about normal before, “Normal is Just a Setting but the Knob on my Dryer is Broken”. See https://cigarman501.com/2023/03/19/normal-is-just-a-setting-but-the-knob-on-my-dryer-is-broken/ if you are a mind to.  

I used the Addams quote in that previous post but saw it again this week and for some reason, it was if I’d never seen it before.

Now there are limits to not being normal. I’m not talking about people who are dangerous to themselves and others. I’m thinking about special people, who here in the southern Appalachian, would be called “quare.” “Old Jeb, now he was a quare bird” kind of people. Just a little eccentric, a bubble or a couple of bubbles off plume but for the most part, harmless and yet special.

Special? Those people with unique gifts, sometimes subtle, sometimes supernatural in addition to being eccentric.

When we needed a new well drilled, the company brought what was described by the company as a water savant. The statement was further qualified, “He’s a little out there…you know, in left field out there. Don’t mind him none, and don’t be surprised if he doesn’t speak to you.” He didn’t but after pointing to a spot on the ground, the drillers struck water at sixty feet, so I didn’t care. The man was a dowser and came from a lengthy line of dowsers…some five generation.

Dowsers are also called Water Witches…how special.

My mother’s friend was one of those special people. She didn’t dress like women in the Sixties were supposed to, she dressed like a man in denim pants and shirts and kept her hair cut short. She was loud and boisterous with a deep and ready laugh. Despite being married and with children there were whispers. “Old Gracie was a quare bird.”

One of her gifts was that she was a kind woman, always willing to help and bring joy where she could. She brought much happiness to my ailing mother. I found out she also had a hidden talent that brought her specialness into better focus.

One day shelling beans with my mother and regaling her with humorous stories, she saw me rubbing a nasty wart on my wedding ring finger as I prepared to head to high school football practice.

“Donnie, I kin get riddah that wart if you want me to.” She carried a knife, and I had a bloody vision.

Instead of reaching for her knife, she reached into the bowl of butter beans that had been shelled and pulled one out.

“I can talk it off. I learned from my daddy. He passed it down to me and his daddy to him.”

Taking my hand in hers she began to rub the bean on that old wart and mumbled words that made no sense. The old “mumbo jumbo” I guess.

After a bit she stopped and said, “Donnie, mark my words. That wart will be gone fore the sun goes down. I just talked it off.”

I was not a believer until Al Stevenson stepped on my hand during practice and made a right turn, a cleat from his shoe on top of that wart. I still bear the scar but true to her words, “That wart will be gone fore the sun goes down,” and it was. Coincidence? I think not.

We don’t seem to abide special people who “dance to the beat of a different drum” as we once did. People who dress differently or pray to different gods or swing differently. In some cultures, they were held in reverence, as our Native American brothers and sisters did. Now we just call them names it seems and it ain’t just “quare.” If the Bible is to be believed, Jesus was special. I wonder if we would welcome him now or try to hide him in the attic. I think he would be proud to be called a “quare bird.”

Update

Linda Gail is a bit of a quare bird. She has taken to dressing like a gipsy woman who likes purple and I’m not complaining. She always had a special gift for people. She is kind and caring, children and old people seem to search her out…as do animals. A person with the special gift of empathy.

She has a spirituality about herself that she doesn’t manage very well, dropping anything she is doing to help both the young and the old. The problem is now she can’t, and it weighs heavily upon her.

It has been a rough week following Linda’s chemo treatment and as I write this, it is only Tuesday. A friend of mine recently passed from the ravages of cancer. She opted to discontinue chemo when the path it followed became too rutted to travel. I thought she was a little selfish. I don’t feel that way anymore.

Follow Don Miller at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

A Little Piece of Heaven

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“Is it possible for home to be a person and not a place?” ― Stephanie Perkins, Anna and the French Kiss

“Home isn’t where you’re from, it’s where you find light when all grows dark.” ― Pierce Brown, Golden Son

“Outside the Front Gate”

We were separated from our “little piece of heaven” in the foothills of the Blue Ridge in the late summer of 1987 by a chain link fence and a locked gate with a puppy dog emblem on top. To ensure we didn’t venture in was a huge, bearlike dog. He was quiet but eyeing us warily from what I assumed was a garage but could have been the Blue Ridge’s largest doghouse. We didn’t know at the time that this would be our little piece of heaven but there was a sign on the driveway saying, “For Sale.”

“Sometimes you don’t know you are lost until you are found.”

We were out making memories as we did back then. Driving unknown roads hoping to get lost on some winding pig trail. Gas was cheaper and our car a steed to find adventure. It would be the beginning of many such adventures but none as important as this one.

We talked about the need to move into something larger. Something rundown we could renovate…a couple of acres of land to surround it. Somewhere we could spread out a bit. Something better for two people and three puppy dogs than a condominium. Somewhere to make memories. This was it we just didn’t know it at the time.

My bride exclaimed, “This is perfect.” “Not so fast” my Lee Corso voice said in my head. That’s not true, I didn’t know much about Lee Corso thirty-six years ago and don’t think ESPN’s Game Day existed. What was true was that there would be many pig trails and switch backs before it became “our little piece of heaven.”

 “Not so fast!”

My bride made the phone call as soon as we got home. When she gets something in her head, she takes the bit in her teeth and will not be turned even if it means galloping over a cliff. The realtor was nice but told us a couple was signing a contract on the property the following week. My bride was deflated. I wasn’t sure what I was.

He told us 3300 Highway 11 was an old farmhouse sitting on the front right corner on eighty-seven acres fronting Highway 11. We found later it was populated with eighty-seven acres of pines, oaks, mountain laurel, black walnuts, and hemlocks. It was cut by seven streams with the scattered remains of moonshine stills littering their banks. Some foggy mornings the smell of sour mash still permeates the air.

Old as in built in 1890. It was described as gently rolling but that was a lie. It was cut with streams that left deep ravines to be navigated. Significantly more land than we needed, and I took the realtor’s word as law and immediately forgot about the eighty-seven acres and the old two-story farmhouse.

A phone call later in the week brought it back to the forefront of my pea head. The realtor let us know, “The owner, Mr. Copeland, would like to meet you and would be willing to take you on a tour.”

Linda immediately jumped at the opportunity and the rest is history. After a day of being walked into the ground by a seventy-seven-year-old retired Methodist minister, Mr. Copeland walked out of the scheduled closing simply saying, “I like them better than you.”

“Through the Front Gate”

I don’t know how many times I’ve walked through our front gate but I’m always glad to be back. I feel like this is where I want to be…need to be. It is where that special person is and where darkness always turns to light.

Despite the trials and tribulations of the past thirty-seven years, this is home. Despite the concerns of getting too old to keep up with the place, no matter how run down or overgrown, this is home. This is home because Linda Gail is there along with the ghosts of people and puppies now gone.

Weekly Update

Linda had her second treatment. She is a little “wired” from the steroids but was able to get some sleep the night after. Two days removed from the chemo she looks like she sat too long in the sun and her bruises are more apparent due to the blood thinner she is on. She is weak as a kitten.

Earlier bloodwork indicates positive results so we are hopeful that the chemotherapy will put her into remission. Her hair is falling out and it has been a bitter pill but Linda being Linda has added colorful scarves, one her grandmother wore, and a floppy purple hat.

She was also gifted a beautiful wig. Thanks for all the prayers, cards of concern and good Ju Ju, and support. Special thanks to Kristen Coward for the beautiful, knitted throw and Christin Bennett for the beautiful wig.

The blog image is at the front gate looking in through Japanese Honeysuckle. It also served as a cover photo of the book, “Through the Front Gate.” It and other books and novels can be purchased at https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Famazon.com%2Fauthor%2Fcigarman501%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR0G8ELuHBR-zAMdiSZ_Z9GoeW5Psc0S14PJw504LpXFf52Jks6KPrEQaRQ&h=AT2IgW5Kbd1ZtAc4wst-zIreyxAHAKtKLouaz6WV3uU4HpYHAY8ein7iMLZ1tAGtutYNPRNJ-Osf6jiN7_6o5okZBWh-zAESJSSmXOdrud3JDHqu2HYvwGecM2OtWP_wdYT_QI-qUUsXgW1B-_qdtw

With a Little Bit of Love and Luck

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“Everybody needs a little good luck charm
A little gris-gris keeps you safe from harm
Rub yours on me and I’ll rub mine on you
Luckiest couple on the avenue” Jimmy Buffett, Love and Luck

I’m trying not to focus on bad luck. I’m waiting on Linda to ready herself for an unexpected trip to the hospital for an ultrasound. Her foot and leg are swollen and while swelling can be a byproduct of chemotherapy, the oncologist is sending us just in case. Don’t need a nasty blood clot…sometimes you get what you don’t need.

It would be easy to wallow in self-pity and rue the hand Linda and I have been dealt. It is hard to go with the flow when you worry the flow might be circling the toilet. As I question the direction of my flow a lyric from a Jimmy Buffett tune plays from my earbuds, “Mysteries, don’t ever try to solve them. We’re just players in this game and no one’s keepin’ score.“

Life is mysterious and not only is no one keeping score, no one knows the rules of the game.

Buffett left for “one particular harbor” Friday, luckily his music is still around to provide soothing anodynes when needed. He wasn’t the best singer or guitar player but there always seemed to be a message that rang loudly…even if it was a party tune. When not singing sea stories, or party songs, he shared his poetic philosophy set to his music. I felt profoundly uplifted when Love and Luck came up on my play list and it has been playing in my head for the last few days.

The first time that I heard of Buffett was from the juke box in a “ne’er-do-well”, hole in the wall bar in the mid-Seventies. It was a perfect Buffett venue. Low lights, a small bandstand, and the smell of beer and cigarettes…maybe “funny” cigarettes hung in the air. We were loud, at best tipsy, and laughed at Let’s Get Drunk and Screw.

Still, he didn’t speak to me until I was walking past a now closed record store in a now closed shopping mall. I had no intention of purchasing an album but after standing and listening to A Woman Gone Crazy on Caroline Street followed by My Head Hurts, My Feet Stink, and I Don’t Love Jesus being piped through the speakers, I was hooked and walked out with the album Havana Daydreaming. Several more albums followed.

“Better days are in the cards I feel, I feel it in the changing winds, I feel it when I fly. So, talk to me, I’ll listen to your story, I’ve been around enough to know there’s more than meets the eye.”

Linda has had a hard week and I’m trying to believe there will be better days. I really am. I’m trying to believe we’ll get to act like the crazy teenagers we never got to be once we get this craziness under control. Even if it is just in our heads. Boat Drinks and Gumbo in New Orleans again…but my knees won’t let me chase the street cars or fast dance to Freeway of Love. Walks along Fort Walton Beach…any beach. Any little seacoast town will do, the seedier the better.

So many sweet memories embrace me…am I retreating into the past too much with the ghost of Buffett riding as my navigator? We’ve had a good life. Am I wrong to want more?

“So have your fun, go ahead and tell your story. Find yourself a lover who will glue you to the floor.”

Life is a mystery and the near future even more so. There must be time for a story or two and a little bit of fun, a little bit of luck, a little bit of love.

I’ve found my lover but at my age, I’m not sure I could get up off the floor, glued or not.

Update

Monday’s ultrasound found a “nonoccluded” blood clot. Nonoccluded means that it is not obstructing blood flow but is still concerning. Linda received a shot of anticoagulant and we both received instructions on how to give the shot which must be administered daily, in the stomach, for a yet to be determined period. So far, I have administered two of them.

Tuesday, we had a surgical biopsy that we probably won’t know the outcome of until Wednesday.

Another battery of labs is scheduled for Thursday. We began the week with only the biopsy scheduled but that fell apart quickly.

Next week we have our second round of chemo.

My bride is still in good spirits through it all…well most of the time. I must remind myself that my fear is only surpassed by hers and sometimes frustrations get the best of us both. I’ll do my best to remember:

“With a little love and luck, you will get by
With a little love and luck, we’ll take the sky
In this megalo-modern world, you’ve got to try
Try a little love and luck and you’ll get by”

This post was written before the news of Jimmy Buffett’s passing on Friday September 1. It had to undergo some verb changes. I feel I have lost an old and dear friend. Jimmy has accompanied me on many long runs and walks, on trips, during backyard cookouts, and a party or five. His “drunken Caribbean rock and roll” coming to me through earbuds or speakers. So glad I got to see him in concert. His spirit and philosophy will continue to live on. “But there’s one particular harbor/ So far yet so near/ Where I see the days as they fade away/ And finally disappear.”

Image of Buffett from the New York Post September 14, 2018. https://nypost.com/2018/09/14/jimmy-buffett-went-surfing-just-before-hurricane-florence/

Love and Luck by Jimmy Buffett
Track eleven on Boats Beaches Bars & Ballads produced by Michael Utley & Russ Kunkel

Don Miller writes at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Walk of Life

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“If you seek creative ideas go walking.
Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.” ― Raymond I. OD Myers

I am sitting here, coffee in hand, waiting for the angels to whisper and watching the glow of the impending dawn.  I am up for no reason other than I woke up, but my creativity is still asleep.  My alarm is set for 6:00 but it never goes off. It is set because there are medications to be dispensed but I wake up ahead of it.

Every day at 5:00 plus or minus fifteen minutes I meet the day.  “Bright eyed and bushy tailed” or as a coaching friend used to yell to his charges “Another day in which to excel.” The puppies, now awake, look up at me as if to say, “Another day, already? Can you at least feed us?”

During better days, I would be off and running or walking in the dark, my headlamp bouncing and holding back the monsters I might encounter along the road. My own form of “the walk of life.” I was creative during those runs. I don’t know if it was angels whispering or trying to think about anything other than the hill I was about to climb.

My bride, Linda Gail, and I greet the day differently.  I am up and ready to go. “Hit the decks a runnin’ boys and turn those barrels around.” (From an old Johnny Horton tune) She on the other hand is “sorta” awake and pissed off about it.  Linda Gail likes to ease into the day…over an extended period.  “Bring me my coffee and then shut up!  Do not talk to me!”  Thirty minutes later I check on her…with another cup of coffee to replace the one now cold on her bed side table.  Thirty minutes later, she is ready to talk about everything she has been thinking about the last hour. 

When we retired, I decided to use her “ease into the daytime” time as my exercise time.  As you might surmise, I am ready to go to bed about the time Linda Gail is hitting her second wind and fighting sleep like the child that she is.  Sometimes I don’t understand how we have survived each other.

I once used my running and walking to declutter and silence the voices in my head. I also used it for creativity, going over plots in my head or waiting for divine enlightenment from my angels of creativity…until Linda Gail got involved. The way we meet the day really wasn’t as big an issue when we both worked…well it was when we decided to do our exercise walk…together…before we went to work…in the dark…while she was pissed off.    

At first it was due to her fear. I had a heart attack and for six months she was fearful about letting me walk and run alone. During the summer it was not a problem but when the school year began our schedules had to change. I would ease out of bed at four-thirty. I would then wake Linda at five-thirty, bring her coffee and a banana and take off for a thirty-minute run with a plan to meet her for a thirty-minute walk at six. A shower at 6:30 and plenty of time to get to school by 8:00.

That was the plan…which, like well-made plans sometimes do, went asunder.  Usually, I would continue to walk or jog back and forth over the short Airline Road until she showed up…fifteen to thirty minutes late, coffee in hand…and I did not dare make a comment.  The one time I commented did not go well.  On those mornings she showed up early I knew I better be quiet and just walk.  It didn’t matter, any day I should just be quiet and walk until she began to initiate the conversation.  “Why are we whispering?  Are we afraid we might wake up the bears?”

Linda Gail and I didn’t exactly walk for the same reasons.  She walked totally for her head to battle depression…with a cup of coffee in her hand and with frequent stops to point out plants, animals, or reptiles.  In other words, a stroll to “elevate her mind.”  I did it for my head too, but I also walked for exercise.

We haven’t been walking together lately…despite being “yoked” together for thirty-seven years. The brutality of life has intervened along with the brutal heat; our walks have slowed almost to a stop. We finally ventured out to the path around the lake at Look Up Lodge.  A nice slow, reasonably flat stroll on one side of the lake.  A short walk to build up her strength. It proved what I knew, “I have missed our walks.”  I have also missed our talks although I did ask if I had her permission to chatter…old habits, I guess.  Comfortable old habits.

Update on our Walk of Life

Linda is much stronger but battling her neuropathy and foot and leg swelling that sometimes accompanies chemotherapy. We saw a cancer surgeon who muddied the waters a bit. He feels she has been misdiagnosed as to the type of cancer and has scheduled a new and different type of biopsy next week before her next chemo treatment the following week. I’m unsure as to what this means if anything. The plan is the same, continue the “walk of life” as long as possible and as long as it is a quality walk. To all who sent their support and cards of encouragement, thank you. They mean a lot.  

Obviously, this has nothing to do with Dire Strait’s “Walk of Life” but why should I let that bother me? Thank you, YouTube. Besides, I’m not even sure what Dire Strait’s song is about. Enjoy.

Some neat 80’s sports bloopers as a bonus.

Don writes at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

The Girl with the Pumpkin on her Head: A Love Story

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“You fell in love with a storm. Did you really think you would get out unscathed?”
― Nikita Gill

When attempting to decide what kind of writer I wanted to be, I authored a book that was a collection of stories about my life with Linda Gail in the foothills of the Blue Ridge entitled “Through the Front Gate.” The book was a collection of stories, no rhyme or reason, I’m not sure I had any goal in mind. Most of the selections centered around the woman I married and the ancient farmhouse we bought. I think I’m going to rewrite it. I’ll have a goal this time…and I hope I’ve grown as a writer. Yes, there is a rewrite in my future.

***

My Birth

“Maybe love at first sight isn’t what we think it is. Maybe it’s recognizing a soul we loved in a past life and falling in love with them again.” ― Kamand Kojouri

I was born in the fall of my thirty-fifth year in 1985. I say this because my “real” life didn’t begin until she said yes.

I hadn’t planned to ask her to marry me. I thought I was too scared to ask as in “already twice burned” scared. As I asked, I looked intently into her hazel eyes and noticed they turned from gray green to bright green. I have learned over the years that green doesn’t always mean GO! Sometimes it means run like hell and be prepared to duck while you are doing it. This was not one of those times.

It was a spontaneous moment. I hadn’t really contemplated asking until I asked. It was a simple…almost casual, “Why don’t we get married.” As the request came out of my mouth, I knew it was blessed by the “gods of matrimony.” She must have thought so too, she said yes.

We weren’t young, I was thirty-five, she a year younger. We were both old enough to know better. Many friends were shaking their heads in disbelief. I had a couple of failed excursions into matrimony, she had never been married. She had been asked more than once but was still holding out for “mister right.”

When I asked for hand, her mother looked me straight in the eyes and without much expression of support said, “I’ll pray for you.” Her father’s comment foretold the future, “I don’t know why you are asking me. She’s never listened to me before.”

I don’t know when I first met Linda Gail, my ex-roommate’s on again, off again girlfriend. If you believe in reincarnation, I may have met her in a previous life. It is as if she has always been around.

I remember her in a striped bikini top over purple shorts as she helped my ex-roomy clean his boat. I noted she was a fine figure of a woman. I found out later she baits her own hook and will take off any fish she catches.

Later there was an early football season encounter on top of a press box before a football game.

We disagree on the moment we met, but I know when I was first smitten. She had an inflated pumpkin on her head preparing to celebrate Halloween.

She was a well-put together, remember the bikini, petite little girl with curly brown hair and twinkling hazel eyes. She had prominent cheek bones but was missing a spray of freckles across her nose. Her smile might be a bit off kilter and she never smiles enough.

Linda doesn’t just enter a room; she explodes into the room. Motion in several different directions as she talks more with her hands than she does with her mouth.

We would become fast friends with a heavy accent on friends. It would be the following football season before I had enough nerve to say yes when she asked me out. I was slow to act because of my relationship with her ex-boyfriend but the action was rapid once it began.

Slow to act but quite interested. I’d like to say that the relationship took off when the ex-boyfriend was transferred to a city three hours away, but the truth is we continued to dance around each other for six months before we finally decided to dance together.

There were friendly “flare-ups” until she took it upon herself to invite me to see an old friend of hers singing at a hole in the wall named the “Casablanca.” It looked nothing like “Rick’s Place” in the movie, but the singer/piano player might have been better than “Sam”. Ronnie didn’t sing “As Time Goes By” though but might have banged out a version of “That Old Time Rock and Roll.”

Yes, a rewrite is in order with a few more added stories.

Update:

As I write this, we are exactly one-week past Linda Gail’s first chemo treatment. I now know that if you have never been through chemo or supported a loved one going through chemo, you have no idea how painful it is.

For two days after, my bride was frantically manic and then the wheels fell off. There was a great deal of pain we weren’t expecting, and she is quite tired and weak. Emotionally, late in the day she grows fangs and bites. Thankfully, there was no nausea.

She is weak but has grown stronger and we have two weeks of reprieve to get stronger until the next one.

It is a learning experience. I have also found out that this disease is not just limited to the person who has it. It is a family disease.

Don’s books may be purchased in soft cover or downloaded at Amazon.com: Don Miller: books, biography, latest update

Controversy Sells

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“This is almost always the case: A piece of art receives its f(r)ame when found offensive.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

Okay, before we argue, I am using the broadest definition of art. Painting, sculpture, music, theater, movies, literature, etc., including a 4-6-3 double play in baseball, especially if it involved Ozzie Smith. Anything done by Ozzie Smith must be considered, at the very least, “artistic” as he danced around the left side of infield.

As if we don’t have enough political dissent, over the past couple of months, we have had controversies involving the arts, sculpture, music, literature, and movies, two within the past month. You know them unless you have been sequestered in the deepest South American jungle for the six months. What do they have in common…money to be made…and in my humble opinion the controversy is stupid!

Michelangelo’s David controversy that got a Florida principal fired, Jason Aldean’s song and video, “Try That in a Small Town”, and the movies “Barbie” and “The Sound of Freedom.” All have created much controversy and as a byproduct created financial boom.

Okay, not for Michelangelo. Mike has been dead for several centuries, and the Florida principal is still fired. She did get an invitation to come to Italy to see the real thing. That seems a very “small” reward. However, it did put Renaissance art back in the public eye which created the problem in the first place.

Artistic controversy is not new, something many artists consciously and actively pursue. Who can forget “Fountain” by Marcel Duchamp, which was a porcelain urinal signed with Duchamp’s pseudonym, R. Mutt, and presented as a sculpture. Who can forget it? I just learned of it but from what I read, it created controversy in 1917 and brought Duchamp to the forefront of the art world and praise from plumbers everywhere.

One man’s art is another’s urinal

A controversy I do remember, Robert Mapplethorpe’s The Perfect Moment Exhibition, 1989, found itself steeped in controversy due to graphic S&M content. The Philadelphia Museum of Art, who had organized the show, had received federal funding from the National Endowment of the Arts. Senator Jesse Helms mobilized a group of members of Congress to sign an angry letter to the NEA.

The show was supposed to open at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., a museum that received a great deal of federal funding, but amid the outcry, the director canceled the show. Financial boom in reverse. To keep funding the exhibit was cancelled.

Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” wasn’t particularly popular or a huge money maker until the video splashed like a warm cow patty. When the CMA decided to pull the video over the message of the video, country music fans chose up sides and sent the song to the number one spot on Billboard. All that free advertising. As I understand it, the song also dropped from Billboard’s Number 1 to 27th in record time. Once controversy is replaced by newer controversy, we quickly forget the old one.

Not all controversies translate into financial boom as the then Dixie Chicks found out. During a London concert in March 2003, the band declared that they were “ashamed” of fellow Texan, President George W. Bush, who was planning to invade Iraq.

The comments sparked backlash and the group’s music was pulled from several radio stations and their record sales took a hit. Rebranded as The Chicks, which didn’t enamor them to Southerners, the fourteen-time Grammy winners have never regained their fame.

I grew up in a time of protest music and wonder if, those supporting the message of “Try That in a Small Town” or The Chicks fall from grace would be as supportive of Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam” or Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit.” No need to argue the point, I’m just wondering aloud and yes, I did bring race into the statement.

In case you received your history education from the deep South in the Sixties and Seventies, you may wonder what I’m talking about. Simone’s song was a reaction to the racially motivated 1963 Mississippi church bombing that claimed the lives of four innocent children, and Holiday’s, a protest of the lynching of Black Americans with lyrics that compare the victims to the fruit hanging from trees.

Billie Holiday

There were plenty of folks who protested both songs at the time. “We got several letters where they had actually broken up this recording and sent it back to the recording company, really, telling them it was in bad taste,” Simone said during a 1964 interview on the Steve Allen Show. “They missed the whole point.”

Holiday’s song, first sung in 1939, came as lynchings of Blacks had reached a peak in the Southern United States during the first third of the 20th century. Southerners were not impressed, and the song received little play south of the Mason-Dixon.

Movies have always been controversial. From “I Am Curious (Yellow)”, “A Clockwork Orange”, to “The Passion of Christ”, sex, violence, or religion have always driven the controversy and now we get to add partisan political positions to those controversy.

Original Cinema Quad Poster – Movie Film Posters

Jim Caviezel, who once played Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of Christ”, stars in “Sound of Freedom.” The controversy is not over whether the movie is good or bad but over certain inaccuracies and Caviezel’s supposed ties to Qanon. I don’t know if the movie is good or bad because I haven’t seen it, but I know every movie that is based on “true events” has inaccuracies and untruths for the sake of drama and “esthetic appeal.”

Caviezel’s ties? I liked him in “Person of Interest” and “The Thin Red Line” before I knew his political affiliation and I will still like his acting now that I know it. To like one’s acting ability doesn’t mean I have to like the actor or agree with his politics…or vice versa. If it weren’t for people politicizing, I wouldn’t know his political posture today.

“Sound of Freedom” has made over one hundred million at the box office, mainly from efforts by those on the political right supporting it and the left denigrating it. That being said, the left has won the money battle with “Barbi.” “Barbi?” Over one billion in three weekends. The right yells, “woke, woke, woke” and the left goes and turns it into a billion-dollar movie…about dolls. Only this week’s Mega Million lottery winner made more.

I’m sure millions of current or former Barbi doll owners bought tickets regardless of political standing but much of the controversy surrounding the movie was over whether the Ken character had enough testosterone or was he a sniveling little, whoosie. A character based on a doll with no man parts to begin with.

Liking or disliking art due to political affiliation seems…I don’t know…what is worse than stupid. Mindless? Do I like the painting, the song, or the movie? Did I ask how Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, the artist who created the “Dogs Playing Poker” voted in his last election? No, I just like paintings of puppies smoking cigars and playing poker. No controversy there.

Note: Please don’t point out that I left out…. Sadly, there are dozens of controversies over literature I could have picked. I just don’t have the time.

Update: Things change fast when dealing with controversy. Contemporary Christian music star Derek Webb’s collaboration with Drag Queen Flamy Grant on his new album “The Jesus Hypothesis” has thrust them both into the cross hairs of conservative Christians attacking the release. What happened? The protest AGAINST those attacks have propelled the singing-songwriting drag queen and Webb to the top of the Christian music charts. Yes, controversy sells.

Flamy Grant Sings and Strums

Don Miller publishes at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Update: The Luck of the Draw

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“Today we fight. Tomorrow we fight. The day after, we fight. And if this disease plans on whipping us, it better bring a lunch, ’cause it’s gonna have a long day doing it.”
― Jim Beaver, Life’s That Way

Three and a half weeks ago we failed to draw two to an inside straight. An update on Linda Porter-Miller.

The oncologist confirmed that the biopsy verified our worst fears. Rather than let us sit in stunned silence the doctor prattled along telling us that it was his belief that we could get Linda’s disease into remission. There would be chemo, but surgery might not be in our future because of the way the disease has progressed.

Linda, my better half for nearly forty years, refuses to use the word that describes the disease, but oncologist and chemo are give aways to what we are facing. The disease has focused on her female parts, south of the border, and I will leave it there.

Those who played for or coached against Coach Porter-Miller know what a competitive little girl she is and will have no doubt in the belief of Jim Beaver’s quote, “And if this disease plans on whipping us, it better bring a lunch, ’cause it’s gonna have a long day doing it.”

Everyone who knows her knows too, she is a complicated individual who is not satisfied to battle just one disease. The Monday before we were to have a PET scan and begin chemotherapy, she decided to have a TAI stroke. Two days in the hospital and a battery of tests proved she had had more than one and we went into battling a two-front war, putting off the chemo for a week.

In typical Miss PE fashion, (Miss PE is what her elementary students called her) she has decided it was the best thing that could have happened. Better to know now than to find out in the middle of a war that your rifle was going to misfire. (I apologize for mixing metaphors from gambling to warfare)

She has recovered from the stroke nicely. She stumbles over the occasional word, especially when texting but still talks ninety miles a minute. She makes as much sense now as she always did.

So, we began chemo two days ago, three by the time this is posted. Linda has done well. The big challenge has been keeping up with and when to take the myriads of drugs we are forced to take or in my case administer. We also found out that Linda can’t tolerate the Claritin she was prescribed to counter bone pain. I am reminded of a college student hopped up on “Black Beauties” cramming for an exam.

She is hyper and restless, unable to sleep. I know this is temporary and she needs to rest. I expect her to go “bust” at any moment and wind down like a child’s toy. She needs to rest. This is the first of six treatments. I expect a hard fight and hope for a long fight.

Friends, family, former players, and coaching peers, Linda doesn’t “do” Facebook but if you want to drop a note, I’ll pass it along or if you want to send a card, our address is Linda Porter-Miller 3300 Highway 11, Travelers Rest, SC, 29690.