Tracking

A local shopping mall, I learned to my horror, used a tracking program to trace their Black Friday shoppers via their cell phones. They say, after what I assume was an attack of mini-sanity, that they won't use it again until they give shoppers an opt-out other than turning off their phones. If I'd known this was happening while I was shopping, you can bet I'd have knocked, loudly, on management's door. Or organized a protest where everyone in the mall turned off their phones. Alas, I neither knew about it nor was I a shopper there.

Then again, I have to wonder how many people cared they were being tracked? Most people are only annoyed at airport security because of the delays. However, after my last flight where the TSA woman fondled my breasts (yes, I explained I was wearing an underwire bra but it was hardly big enough to be classied as a lethal weapon), I haven't flown since. Nor will I. It's my choice, and while I love flying, I won't surrender my rights to be protected from an unlawful search.

Do we really not care about protecting the rights of the individual? Fewer and fewer of us do. The argument that the greater good of society outweighs the rights of one person is one civilized societies have struggled with for ages. If you are that one person whose rights are abrogated, I'll bet your answer is clear and emphatic. But when it's the other guy, the weirdo, the shirtless kid with the Sixth Amendment written on his chest in the airport security line who causes a delay as he's arrested, then how do you feel?

A mall using technology to track shoppers sounds harmless enough. Bu what if you don't want anyone to know you visited Victoria's Secrets? Or the shop that sells sex toys? They don't know it's YOU, is the argument. But how long before they do?

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope you all had a wonderful and thanks filled day. Ours starts with church, and it's my favorite part of the day. Then we went for a long walk before the cooking. With all hands on deck, the kitchen work went quickly. Eating was the final event of the day, and I have to say, we outdid ourselves. It's the one day we eat together. What a treat.

We all talk about the books we're reading, and this year's favorite question was "if you were asked to pose with your favorite book for a poster, what would it be?" Youngest child chose THE WASTELAND, elder one picked HATCHETT by Gary Paulson, and I chose, of course, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. My beloved had a hard time with his, since he hates playing favorites. Beth, who was joining us for dinner, said Jane Austen's PERSUASION fit her well. All good books and worthy of a poster each.

Great book talk, wonderful food, and many reasons for gratitude. What a perfect day.

Abundance

What a stunning word. Including everything we have doesn't meet its full import. Abundance implies even more than we need, a surfeit of good, an overflowing of riches of all kinds.  It's a wonderful word we don't often associate with our lives.

We should. How many of us have more than we need of most everything.  If you think about your life, you can probably look back (and forward with expectation and joy!) to times when you were filled to the brim with whatever it was you needed, material or spiritual, at that time. I know I have.  We say in our house that complaint is poverty.  Stifling the niggling little bothers in our everyday lives leads us to acknowledge and appreciate all we have that is good.  It's a lesson I learn again and again, and one day, I hope to get it right and stay rooted and grounded in love.

My gratitude for all the good in the world is deep and unfeigned. We just have to open our eyes and see it.

Beauty

Even though I started out as an English major, I switched to art history when it came time to declare. I think it was the story that the art told that attracted me at first, and then I was in awe of the talent and creativity of the artists. They did something I couldn't - they conveyed a story without words. Plus, I love to look at beauty. Botticelli's beautiful hands, Vermeer's luminescence, Giacometti's strange, haunted figures, looking as if they rose from the ashes of a dying world.

Even today, art galleries and museums call to me. I'm so grateful to live where I can see art, good art, right where I live.

Technology

Today's gratitude covers the incredible advances society has made in technology. We went to see ANONYMOUS last night and liked it very much.I found it to be a commentary on artistic drive and the price paid by those who can't do anything but succumb to it. And that true art is politcal. All interesting ideas. But what really struck me was how difficult it was to communicate. You had to send a rider with a note, and the recepient could be several days' ride away. Entertainment? Two thousand people squished into a mosh pit to see a play. Writing by quill by candlelight.

It all seems very romantic until you have to do it. I'm so happy to be living in an age where technology is cool, advancements occur daily, and they further mankind. No Luddite here. I love hearing music through a high tech speaker as small as my palm, watching hi def TV, and surfing the Internet. Plus, I can't wait to see what comes next.

More Gratitude

Today's thanks goes out to all those teachers who go above and beyond. I've been blessed to pull more than my share, and I know my kids have, too. Billie Burke, who taught senior English in Turkey, gave me my love of Shakespeare. I thought everyone was enthralled sitting through forty different productions of Hamlet, until my daughter wondered why you'd see the same play twice. "The words never change!" she exclaimed, much to my horror. What, why hadn't she been bitten by the Shakespeare bug? The difference, I figured, was the teacher.

Frances Niederer made me pay attention to details. The big picture was fine, but if the details were wrong, it wasn't worth diddly. Richard Dillard provided a safe, nurturing creative envirnonment for all his students. I could go on and on, because every teacher who tries to do the best job possible deserves more than thanks.

How fortunate I've been in my education.

Gratitude #3: Books

Well, what did you expect from a writer?  Lord have mercy, if I'd been born in a time and age without books and literacy that made sure girls learned to read, I'd have checked out early.  Books have always been beside my bed, on my desk, in my bag, under chairs, piled on tables...you name it, there's not a part of my physical environment that isn't book-touched.  When I find a good book (goodness gracious, my heart skips a beat at the thought), there's no putting it down.  It doesn't happen often, but when it does, I have to tell everyone to read it. I buy it for friends and family. I tout its virtues from the roof top.  And when the stack is getting pretty low grade, I return to favorites like Pride and Perjudice, Sylvester or the Wicked Uncle by Georgette Heyer, Falling Woman by Pat Murphy.  I never tire of some books, some authors. The early James Lee Burke Robicheaux novels, some of them, fall into the never-boring category, too.

As you can tell, I'm an eclectic reader. I cross genres with ease.  It's all about the characters, the plot, and the writing for me. The voice, if it grabs me right off the bat, will help carry a not-so-great story, and I'll stick with it.  What a wonderful world we live in, where books are readily and easily available. Thank goodness for libraries, the last bastion of the First Amendment. Mucho gusto for ebooks and cheap paperbacks.  Great gratitude for friends who swap books and recommendations.

I'm eternally grateful to be a woman in a society where books abound, and good books are not the exception, but the rule. Where women can read and not break the law by doing so.  Where women are the literacy-pushers of the young. (How many male librarians did you know when you were growing up?)

Books rule, and not reading drools, to paraphrase one of my daughter's favorite (very youthful) sayings about the difference between the sexes.