Distortions and hammers on ordinary blogs

" I know a woman reviewer on Amazon that will write about her feelings, about books, products, with such insight- but humiliate you, in comments deliberately seek to inflame, distort, she was nicknamed for this "the hammer," she has commented on my mothering, teaching, life, goes onto and into characters I would think to carry on her strange dichotomous relating."

The above is taken from a recent blog by a woman who is the very model of twisting, distorting, inflaming because at her core is a very angry and vengeful woman. She has written and written and written about me--mostly inflamatory and distorted things, seizing on half-truths to twist them into something totally different.

Her latest little ditty is to brand me "the hammer." The most amazing thing is that she took this term out of context to make it become what she wanted to say about me. I reviewed a hammer on Amazon because I review home improvement products. One of my Amazon friends dubbed me "Hammer Judy," a name meant in fondness. This angry blogger believes that I attack her out of the blue when in actuality she always attacks first. Have I attacked her? Of course. Have I said negative things about her? Of course. When attacked, I do often respond (not a wise thing, especially in this case). Does she EVER mention that I apologized publicly and that she has never apologized for a single thing! She even believes that she was right to attack me. Oh brother!

I first met her as a reviewer on Amazon. She wrote insightful, amazing reviews and I--oh woe!--befriended her. I paid hell for that friendship eventually with thousands of negative votes and long, long notes that attacked me personally and all my circle of friends. Why? No one could ever figure out what would set her off or ticked her tail! She has an uncanny ability take my words, twist and distort them and use them to attack me!. To read her comments, one would think every word she writes is true--and I would have believed her if her comments hadn't been against me. That's how I know what she writes is half-filled with poison and half with the truth. Therein lies the problem: How does one distinguish between her reality and her delusions? Answer: with difficulty! She will also take things I say and incorporate them into her rants as if subsuming my qualities. Strange...

Foolish me, I befriended her twice--after a long cooling down period and because she began to respond to the reviews of a mutual friend who was always kind to her.  Foolish, foolish me. This time what caused her to implode was that mutual friend's very negative review of a book both she and I love. Her response to him was very personal, very negative, and far too extreme. Then she wanted me to choose her or him. I chose him. I paid again with hostility and twisted comments, things that just make one's mouth hang open with the orneriness and downright sickness behind the words.

I'm finally responding to her latest round of attacks on me, twisting a term of fondness into one of hatefulness. I am "the Hammer,' and I'm striking this blow for myself.

Addendum: There's much more to this story--there's always more, it seems--but dealing with this person is a no-win situation in that she does not "hear" the other side--merely her own blown almost beyond recognition. I was married to a person who, when wrong, would vociferously take whatever the situation and twist it to create a horrific verbal attack of unequal proportions in order to hide his own wrong. I thought he was the only person like that-- until now.

Cleaning out winter!

After an incredibly cold winter with freeze after freeze I could not imagine anything coming up this spring. But look! Entire clusters of dianthiuses! The irises have already bloomed. You know they are the only plant not to drop leaves. Instead, they just curl in on themselves, self fertilizing. Let's see what else we have...

A little wider view of the front bed. There was a magnolia tree growing smack dab next to the driveway when I moved in seven years ago. I had it cut down! Magnolia trees--the state tree of Louisiana-- are beautiful. The lemony aroma of the creamy yellow and white flowers is just remarkable. But oh! What a mess those trees make all year long. Two years ago I dug and dug to remove the stump and these long horizontal roots which fed toadstools all the time. What a job--it lasted one and one-half years getting those roots out! But the flower garden I created is so worth it. These are the plants that came up for the first time. I've done nothing to this garden except remove dead leaves from a neighbor's pin oak tree.

This is my back garden. I call it my English garden because it is small and dotted with hostas and azaleas. Well, I don't know what makes an English garden, but it feels like one. I just started cleaning out winter here. But look at the amazing hosta leaves! It is a mystery why the size of the leaves tripled in size. But I'm pleased!

Every spring these vivid yellow flowers spring up from this ground cover. When they finish blooming, I'll go round and pluck them off. The entire stem comes right off without damaging the new plant that grows at the bottom and continues on into the fall. One of God's amazing creations!

Will "the book" die?

(Note: This is an ongoing work in progress. I apologize for the inconvenience...) 
 
Will the book--the printed word-- die?

This question has been roiling in my head for a couple of weeks now. Because I am a school librarian, such a question would concern me. (Even if I weren't a librarian, I am concerned.)

Before I get to the topic at hand, here's the back story. You must know--and understand--that my principal is a science person--a hands-on, lab-based, former science teacher. She brought Science Olympiad to our school. In our second year of competition our team won second place in a competition hosted by a huge private school in Texas, a competition that brings in schools from many states. This year we won first. What she cannot do, she finds people to do. She has inspired our two science teachers to excel, to go beyond one's duty. One of those teachers is 69 (my point being that age is often irrelevant). I could go on and on about this principal who was hired five years ago to take on a run-down school with low teacher morale, with discipline problems that shouldn't exist in a Catholic school, and has made it into the place to be.

I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy.
Frank Zappa

It's good to find a quote like the above to include in a blog about the death knell of books, don't you think? It's good that they (books) still exist--still, definition: "Verb, 1. stand still - remain in place; hold still; remain fixed or immobile." Is the concept of a book static, fixed? Does it "remain in place"? Ponder those words a minute.

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love. 

 Christopher Morley (1890 - 1957)

 

If a book is "still," can it cause the reader to "fall in love"? Seems contradictory, now doesn't it? One holds a book in hand, one engages with the words, the symbols of thought from the author, the gift-giver. The reader soars, or dips, or dives, or paddles, or coasts, or laps, or zips, or roars. It's a swim. It's a flight. It's a trip of some kind. Ah, do you ever notice that very moment when your mind engages with the creative momentum of the author? It's really divine. I mean that literally.

 

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. 

Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

 

During the summer before I entered the eighth grade, I had read all the books in the children's section of my local library I planned to read: all the dog books, the fairy tales, the Poohs and Wonderlands, the horse books, the Nancy Drews. (I'm a Boomer. There were no lovely children's illustrated books as exist today.) I wandered to the adult section. No alarms sounded. No lights flashed. I was surprised. I found Gone With the Wind, my first adult novel. I practically read non-stop. Then I found Exodus, even more adult. This young woman, still a girl really, entered a new era of her life from those two books. What came next, odd, I don't remember, but Thoreau certainly had it right.

 

Which in some odd way takes me back to my principal. A couple of weeks ago she said to me that Kindle and other ebooks would take the place of libraries, that libraries were on their way out. Frankly, she said, she would be glad to see the end of physical books because they take up so much space after one reads them. She has boxed up all her books, she said, and stored them in the garage.

Was I indignant? Did I fire back with the irrefutable proof of the living and pulsing and vibrant concept of books, as well as their physical allotment of space? No, I didn't. I didn't defend books at all. I was, well, I was speechless. Could someone really say that books and libraries were dying? 

A room without books is like a body without a soul. 

Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)

A room with stacks of books!

 

Wonder what my principal would say if she ever wandered through my house? There is at least one bookcase in every room, including hallways, laundry room, and bathroom. In the main rooms bookcases line the walls. I also have stacks of books everywhere. Yes, it's a big clutter of books, but I love having my friends all around me. I pretty much know where everything is and can locate a particular book fairly quickly. Box them up? Not a chance!

 

Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand. 

Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972)

 

I've been reading books by Ryszard Kapucsinski, a Polish journalist, who traveled the Third World reporting on the human condition via wars, transitions of power, military juntas, soccer games, Herodotus. The first ball of light he gave me was through his book,  Travels with Herodotus. The book was fabulous, literally and figuratively. Rather than summarize my thoughts on his book, here is the link to my review: Judy's review of Travels with Herodotus. The second illumination came from The Other, in which the journalist shows the reader, cogently, what it is like to be "the other," an unspoken term that blithely and--like a blight--coats our daily language--if only we were aware. I also reviewed it: My review 

Although I remain very fond of Travels (it was my first meeting with Ryszard), I most learned from Imperium, his profound, imminently readable, quotable, and digestible book (in that it is "food" for thought). The history of the Soviet Union: its rise and fall, was utterly interesting, informative, shocking, riveting--a year's worth of reading in one book, a full curricula of study. I was mesmerized. Again, here is the link to my review: Review of Imperium.

 

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is a pleasure beyond compare.  ~Kenko Yoshida

 

This quote summarizes the physical act of reading. Lamplight, book before you. If you're a reader, you immediately connected with the quote. If not,

 

 

 

 

(more to come--

The subject is cats and addiction...

Meet my Saints  Who Dat Cat!!   I sew a line of kitties from McCall's pattern M5259. I have about 20 of these in various colors and patterns. More are shown below:

 Saints Who Dat Kitty!! 

LSU Tiger Kitty

  

St. Patrick's Kitty (one of my favorites)

Valentine Kitty who had a tatoo put on her leg in support of the Saints!!

 Valentine Kitty 2

 Laundry Kitty (this is maye my favorite)

 Mardi Gras Kitty with yellow bowtie

Mardi Gras Kitty with Mask and Beads Legs

                

Favorite lines from favorite poems

Twitter: I was just thinking of this: favorite lines from favorite poems. Here they are:

"The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.

Had to set down the entire poem. I had such fun with this poem as an English teacher in another life. I used it as a basis for descriptive writing.

"Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" by Walt Whitman
I was mesmerized by the beauty of Whitman's word choice for this poem I read for an assignment in college. That memory is one permanently etched in my mind like the day of JFK's assassination.

OUT of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his bed, wander’d alone, bare-headed, barefoot,

Almost any Emily Dickinson poem:
Here's one stanza:

There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

"Mending Wall" by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. 


"The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot (my favorite poem)

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Just the first few lines of this long, convoluted, historical, symbolic, archetypal poem will suffice to introduce a rich rich poem in the pantheon of American literature. (although Eliot was an expatriate).

A continuing post...

New Year's Resolutions

A common theme has run throughout my life: aloneness, sometimes accompanied by loneliness, sometimes by bitterness, sometimes by frustration. It seems I've always been alone. I'm the wallflower that you didn't know. On the outside I smile and flit here to there. Her lonely? No way! She's too bubbly. Only on the outside. Sometimes inside. Mostly alone.

I always wanted to be a writer until I discovered I have no story in me, except this one: A young woman, so desparately alone, is finally committed to a rest place, an asylum, a sanctuary, free from being pulled apart, to begin her real life--found in books. Isn't that sad?

Instead, I have words and put them to use in writing about other people, at least until I started blogging. Now all kinds of personal stuff boils out of me, mainly because I know not many (any?) people read my blog. I feel too sorry for myself. Where's my joy?

So, New Year's resolutions! Make any? I never do because it is all so futile.

1. Pray again. Be spiritually connected again. I have such childish views of God. My mother doesn't attend church because she is so hard of hearing. It would all be just buzz in a church, so she watches church TV every Sunday. One week a pastor fervently asked his audience to pray, really pray for one special thing, a very personal, special thing to prove that God answers prayers. My mother is a voracious reader and was gradually losing her eyesight to cataracts. Her doctor would not perform that surgery until her blood pressure went down. For two LONG years she struggled with medication, diet, rest, exercise, everything, but it remained too high for him. When she prayed for her surgery, that's when she had us call another doctor, who saw her, and promptly set the date for the first procedure, then the second. Now it is done and she sees again! No doubt, God answered her prayer or set things in motion for it to be answered!

So, I've been saving my special prayer until I knew exactly what would be special for me. Here it is: a new job. No more children. No more lesson plans (which I don't write anyway). No more discipline (a problem I utterly hate dealing with). Just a new job that pays the same meager amount I'm making now. That's my prayer--a new job, having nothing to do with schools.

2. Unclutter. Been working on it. Seems I get nowhere, but I'm so far from where I started that I know I have accomplished so much. So far yet to go.

3. Diet and exercise. The age-old problem of gaining weight and not exercising. When spring comes again, I can work in my yard, hauling and lifting, digging and carrying on in the yard. Great exercise! Diet by eating properly and proportionately!

4. Force myself to keep in contact with people. I am becoming a hermit.

5. That's a good start. That's enough.