January 29, 2020

Do you remember plastic curtains? Are they even a thing, anymore? I ask because we have very recently installed new curtains in our living room. They went up just a few days ago. They’re burgundy in color, and we ordered them online. They were advertised as thermal black-out drapes, they have grommets—and our daughter had to help her daddy hang them, because he couldn’t get the folding right. In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t think I could have, either. 

In the first place that we lived in back in 1972, we had plastic curtains. It was an apartment in the middle of a big city, and covering the windows was a priority for privacy’s sake. We were, after all, newlyweds. It only cost us five dollars for the pair, and we hung them in front of our living room window, which was one of only two windows in the whole place.

I’m almost positive we took those plastic curtains with us a year later when we left the city. We moved back to the country and into the house in which I lived my first five years of life. The house belonged to my mother at the time. When we moved next door when I was five, my parents kept the first, smaller house as an income property. David and I and our firstborn moved in after Mother had to evict her previous tenant for not paying the rent.

For my part, I had been living in the city for the first time in my life and it hadn’t gone well for me. I felt ill all the time, I remember, I think because I simply wasn’t used to the noise, or the pollution. We moved to the country around the time of our first wedding anniversary, in July.

Mother didn’t give us a break on the rent, either. She charged us what she’d charged her last tenant—75 dollars a month. There was a field that separated the house we rented from her house. This was in 1973, and we lived in that house until her death in 1976. After the funeral and the reading of the will and a discussion between my brother, my sister and I, it was decided that my sister would have the house I was in, also known as the little house; David and I would have the house that had been Mother’s, also known as the big house; and we would each of us pay our brother a set amount each month over several years. 

But back to the curtains. Over the years, we’ve had nice looking curtains, and ugly plastic ones. We’ve had sheers that I made by purchasing the material at a fabric store, putting a hem in the top, and then sliding them onto one of those flattened rods that hook onto brackets. You know the kind I mean. We’ve had icky colored curtains we’ve bought at garage sales, and even a couple of pairs we bought new from a discount store. All of them had one thing in common, and that was that they were very, very inexpensive.

Now these new ones aren’t what anyone could call expensive, not really. But I can tell you, they are the most expensive ones we’ve ever had. When I saw the burgundy drapes online, I thought of the soft brown laminate flooring we’ve installed, and the new “pale peony” color of our walls. Imagine beige with just a hint of pale pink, and that’s the color of my walls. Our current sitting furniture in that room is brown, and my electric chair is a muted blue—as if it was nearly an aqua blue but someone sprayed a light grey fog over it. And, we also have my mother’s china cabinet, which is made of maple, and was built by her father, who was a cabinet maker.

I imagined those drapes in my living room, and I thought they’d make the room “pop”. I am pleased to report that I was right! This astonishes me more than I have words to say, because I’m not very good at deciding what goes with what, color-wise. My talents don’t lie in the visual arts.

We have one more thing to do to make our living room complete—well, two actually. The first we will accomplish this week, when we go to a local furniture store and order our new sofa/twin recliner set. We’ll hopefully order it on Friday, with an expected 12-week delivery. And, we have to look for some art. We want something on the wall above the television, the one solid wall in the room. David thought that whatever we get should be longer than it is wide. I’m thinking possibly a set of three. Nothing expensive. Art collectors we are not. We just want something that will fit, that will look nice, and finish the room.

I’m feeling bold and maybe a little full of myself now, because the curtains worked out. I could be on a roll! I’m hoping that I was being honest in my answer to David when he asked me what I had in mind.

I told him I really didn’t have a clue, but I’d know it when I see it.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

January 22, 2020

Many years ago, we lived out in a rural community—one that was so rural the word “community” to describe it really is superfluous. We lived out in the sticks. Yes, our nearest neighbors were within sight, but the closest store was about a mile and a half away, and once that corner store closed, the next closest was about six miles from us.

I loved that place. It had been the house in which I had spent most of my childhood. I loved it even though it was old, and drafty. That was the house where we had our first fire; we had the house repaired afterward, updated electrically and given a new face. Then, for reasons far too complicated to put down here, a couple of years later, we sold it.

If I could have one do-over in life, it would be that decision, the sale of that first house. But I digress.

Before the fire, we had two dogs, named Snoopy and Cherokee. And I’m not sure how now, (okay, I know how but I’m not certain if I know who the sire was) but our Cherokee ended up having a litter of pups—nine pups—and we gave them all away except three of them. Yes, that meant we had five dogs at one time, out in the sticks, where they ran free, because in those days that was how it was. They weren’t big dogs, they were medium sized, but still there were five of them.

When we would be out in the yard and throw a ball? It sounded like a herd as they all ran after it! I don’t recall the copious details of raising those nine pups to the eight-week point. But I’m trying to, because at the moment we have three puppies almost at the eight-week mark here. On Friday they go for their vet checks – something we didn’t do in the olden days, either. And then, after that, within a couple of weeks, two will go to new homes, and one will stay with us.

This new puppy will be David’s new best friend. David has decided to name him Theodore Bear. To that impressive moniker, I will add: son of Tuffy, because he is.

Three puppies that are Chihuahua(dam) and Morkie(sire) cross are apparently called Chorkies. Two of the three are fluffy, kind of like their daddy, but mostly all black, like their mommy. The third resembles a chihuahua, almost; he doesn’t have a lot of fluff, just a tiny bit, but he’s brown and black, which were Tuffy’s colors, and he’s getting a bit of facial hair that resembles his daddy’s beard. He’s the smallest of the three, even though he was the largest at birth.

The most important thing about Bear is that his daddy already loves him.

David traveled a bit of a road to get to the point where he wanted one of the pups. I mean, he always kind of wanted one? But Tuffy, you see, was his heart in a lot of ways. Tuffy was supposed to have had a life span of 13 years. We got him when he was eight weeks old, and we only had him two months shy of 7. 

The pain of losing an animal is real, and for David and yes, me too, losing Tuffy was devastating. When we knew Bella was pregnant, David’s original position was that he didn’t want to go there again.

There are a lot of reasons to decide not to take a puppy on. Most of them are valid, and when looked back upon, static.

The reason David clung to at first was that he didn’t want to go through that kind of loss again. And I understand that. But I also understood that a decision made under those emotions could come to be a decision he would regret. Tuffy fathered three puppies, and the girls and I believed and still do that if David doesn’t take one of them, he truly would live to regret it.

I’ve written within the confines of a novel or two, that once you love, you become a hostage to your loved one’s fortunes. It’s so with people, and it’s so with pets. Now with pets, you understand going into the relationship that you will outlive your fur-baby. You will have to suffer that loss at some point down the road. Most of us, I believe, suffer that loss after the pet’s full life expectancy has been reached. We get a good long time to prepare, emotionally, as best as one can to such an event. And letting go, that final goodbye, is a gift we give them for the long life of love they’ve given us.

But nothing in life is free, and the price you pay for love and joy is often loss and sorrow. And the secret is knowing in your heart that love, true love, is worth that price, and more.

David still says that he hasn’t completely decided, not one hundred percent. For his sake, I hope he keeps the little bugger.

But that is a decision that only he can make. I’ll keep you informed.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

January 15, 2020

I think it would be a really good idea if we gather together all the climate-change deniers, those who are in a position to do something about what’s happening to our planet but claim that it’s all a hoax. Let’s load them all up and send them for a nice visit to Australia.

Those pictures that come to us over the safety of our computer or television screens each day are so damn hard to watch, aren’t they? More than billion animals, dead. Some entire species possibly extinct. Carbon-eating trees and plants, gone. The loss of the plants and the animals has been the most devastating toll, because most of the area burning is not as heavily populated by people as some other areas of Australia are. But it was full of oxygen producing foliage and animals—creatures who are of this planet every much as we are but have no say as to how we manage it.

I don’t want you to think I am blind to the human tragedy here. I know that houses have been destroyed, and lives lost. Houses can be rebuilt in the space of months; foliage cannot. Animal populations cannot. David and I have lived through two fires, a few years apart, different properties. I know how hard it is to lose things, especially photos and personal mementos, which are irreplaceable. It’s like a victimization, so I am not deaf to the suffering that people have endured during this catastrophe.

Any loss of any human life is a tragedy, and human beings have not escaped this inferno. As of January 5th, 25 fatalities had been reported. One can’t help but want to scream in response to the total carnage, as night after night images of the flames—and the charred remains of what was are broadcast for all to see. What had been green and lush and thriving, has now been completely and utterly destroyed.

The animals and the vegetation can’t rebuild on their own instantly. That will take a long time, but I’m not sure how much of that quality there is if we don’t work on this crisis now.

I can’t get over the figure, a billion animals dead. A billion!

Those brave souls on the ground—volunteers from many countries including Canada and the Untied States—do what they can. Firefighters have arrived from other nations, and every effort is being made to fight the flames. But people can only do so much in that regard. Whatever actions they take is but a stop-gap until Mother Nature sends rain—and lots of it.

Pleas have gone out for financial aid. I often hear people say that they can only afford five dollars, or ten or two, and feel bad about that. They lament that their five dollars won’t do much. But if everyone gave even two dollars, collectively that would be a lot of money. It really does help, it makes a difference. And fighting the fires as they burn and caring for those animals that are being rescued, that’s vital work, no doubt about it.

But where we should be working, where the need is the greatest is to target the causes of this global catastrophe. We need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions, find ways to cut down on our usage of resources, and encourage our scientific community to come up with viable, sustainable solutions to diffuse the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, and reduce the threat to the planet—and to the futures of our children and grandchildren.

We need a global effort to fight this global crisis.

Now, back to the climate change deniers. Those who ignore this danger, this crisis, because fighting it will affect their bank accounts. Their greed will be the death of us all. But they should know that even gold and silver will melt if the fire is hot enough, my friends. If there is any justice in the cosmos then those two things, the gold and the silver of the greedy will melt and trickle away, down, back into the earth from which it came, leaving nothing in its wake but a quickly fading memory.

What does it profit a man or woman to gain all that wealth and lose the earth? A rhetorical question paraphrased from another author, but I’ll answer it. It gains them nothing.

If we don’t wake up and tackle this crisis in earnest, all of us, together, then eventually, among the ashes, what will be left is nothing. Those who once had it all—the wealth, the prestige and the power will discover that all their battles, all their denials, all their lies have left them princes of a dead and rotting planet. 

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

January 8, 2019

We were doing so well. Outside my window, the green grass was completely visible, though the ground was wet from rain, and brown leaves still littered the neighbor’s lawn. It looked like autumn instead of winter—until this past Sunday, when it began to snow. The roads that had been clear as of Monday morning are covered again with a fresh dusting this morning. The car needs to be cleaned off again, but since we’re not planning on going out today, it’ll stay that way unless the sun helps. According to the forecast, we’re in for some snow squalls later today. There kind of fun to watch, in a way. Look out the window, blue skies and sun. Blink, and it looks like a blizzard out there. Blink again, back to blue skies and sun. But too many of those blizzard-looking moments can give an accumulation of “pollen”, so we’ll see.

I’m not necessarily a person who believes in gender-assigned roles for most activities in life. Both male and female can cook and check the oil in the car, change tires and do the laundry. But for me, in this house? Cleaning off the car, taking the garbage to the curb, dealing with the leaves and putting the laundry into the machines—those are David’s jobs these days. I won’t tell you it’s because he’s a man. I’ll tell you it’s because he’s more sure-footed than I am.

The truth is I need my cane to walk anywhere outside—and some days I need it right here inside my house. I can go up and down stairs, if I’m careful and don’t attempt the feat too many times in one day. Before I needed the damn cane every day, it was me, more often than not who would cut the grass, and do the gardening. I had no problem raking and bagging leaves, either. And of course, when I worked outside the home, I cleaned off my own car. Believe it or not, I miss doing those jobs. Well, maybe not cleaning off the car. I loved being outside and active in every season, though the fall was especially good—those days when there would be a promise of winter in the air, and you could feel your cheeks reacting to that chill. The slight breeze on those days would bring fresh, clean air, and it felt as if the world was remaking itself.

Some days—usually in the spring and early summer—the urge to sit outside overcomes my common sense and I do just that. I know that even if I cover myself with a blanket, I’ll be hurting later that day. Any kind of breeze on my legs, even a warmish one, will often penetrate my blanket and result in pain. Some days, that doesn’t matter. I grab at the chance to sit and enjoy the outside, perfectly willing to pay the price of pain at the end of the day for the priviledge.

Have you gotten used to writing “2020” yet? At least if you do most of your writing on a computer, it’s a simple matter to correct your “2019s” and no one ever need know that it took you most of the month to get used to writing the new year. Not like in the “olden days” when you needed to either correct the date on the check or just tear it up and write a new one.

There are events happening in this world that are completely outside of my—and your—control. A lot of things are, come to that. I find myself a hostage to the stupidity of my fellow humans, and I don’t like it, not one bit. I believe that in the years to come, historians will look back on this era as a time when a lot of people suffered from an overdose of stress. It was a good time, they will say, for those wishing to pursue careers as psychologists or psychiatrists. A profitable era for the anti-depressant industry, too. In fact, I predict there will be many books written about the psychoses of this age. I suppose one can take comfort that more will be learned about the human condition as a result of all the B.S. being flung around by so many people these days.

I know that human society has endured other periods of uncertainty, of angst and unrest as the winds of change blew in a direction most sane people would have avoided at all costs if they could. Times when uncertainty was a constant, and people didn’t know what to believe, or which way to turn. I know from reading history that there were times when despair seemed almost contagious, and there was a real fear that the world, as it was known in those days, was coming to an end.

And yes, in a sense, that’s what change is all about. But golly gee willikers, if you believe in the survival of the fittest, wouldn’t you expect the more pathetic examples of the species “homo sapiens” to have petered out by now? I mean, seriously. If our ability to think and our possession of a soul are what separates us from the “lower life forms” on this planet, then certainly the lack of evolution in those two areas would guarantee that those strains would die out. Where is Mother Nature when we really need her?

But then I am reminded that during the most horrific moments of the Blitz, the rats of London thrived. And scientists have long held—or so I’ve heard—that after the most devastating bomb explodes in an urban area, and all human life is wiped out?

The cockroaches will still remain.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

January 1, 2019

Do you make New Year’s resolutions?

I used to but I haven’t for a long time. I was very good at making them, but not so much so at keeping them. One of the lessons I learned not as soon as I would have liked to from my experiences adulting, was that change happens only when it’s a change that is really, truly desired. Heart and mind have to conspire for that change. Just wishing for it doesn’t make it so.

There’s a sentimental pull, a kind of wistful allure that draws us to want to change or begin this clean slate we have ever January 1st with our best foot forward. So we respond to that sentiment, and I believe that it’s in a kind of, “make a wish and blow out the candle” sort of way. And really, as long as that’s all it is, I suppose New Year’s resolutions can be harmless.

For some people, making New Year’s resolutions is just a beginning of the brand-new year annual game they play. You may see it as only a game, and if your friends are making New Year’s resolutions, you’re tempted to do so, too. And when, as it happens most of the time, in a few days or weeks you have a “well, so much for that resolution” moment, you shrug your shoulders, maybe chuckle a little, and carry on with the rest of your year.

But for some of us, trying and failing year upon year can be very debilitating. I was at a place, in my early to late twenties, when I was emotionally fragile. It took me years to understand some things, about self-esteem especially. It was in those years when I would make resolutions and always feel like such a failure when I couldn’t keep them. I’m intuitive when it comes to some things, and dang slow when it comes to others. In my case, the difference between the former and the latter is the amount of thinking I’ve poured into the matter.

The biggest lesson I needed to learn was to be kind to myself. As you’ve likely discovered, the world is happy to provide people who may have a negative opinion about you and aren’t shy to share it. You don’t have to look far, especially these days, to find a critic. That seems to be the way it is, and the more you practice careful selection—that is, give those folks wide berth, why, the better you’ll feel.

But my larger point is this: because there are a lot of people who are more than happy to natter at you, you must not add to that nattering by being critical of yourself. There’s nothing wrong with honest reflection, with seeing where you did it right, and where there’s room for improvement. But don’t call yourself names. Don’t berate yourself the way, perhaps, a parent or older sibling used to do.

It's one of the best tenets to live by, to be kind to one another. You could even say that it’s biblical (because it is). But just as important, and far more urgent, is that you be kind to yourself. Cut yourself some slack. Nobody living on this earth at this time is perfect. And very few deserve the kind of derision that we sometimes and sadly quite freely heap upon ourselves.

Be kind to yourself, as a best friend ought to be.

David and I wish all y’all a joyous and prosperous 2020. May this be a year that will live fondly in your memories forever.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury