SoCS – Page 16 – Joanne Corey

SoCS: tempted by Stephen Colbert

I am tempted to stay up late so I can watch The Late Show with Stephen Colbert when it actually airs, as opposed to recording it with a DVR and watching it the next evening. Even though this is the first week, there are clips of it on the morning news every morning.

I am so glad that the show is off to a great start. I loved Stephen on The Daily Show and watched the entire run of The Colbert Report (the T is silent!) with B, always on delay by DVR.

Despite the temptation to stay up late, 11:35 is way past my 10 PM bedtime, so Stephen will just have to wait inside our little black DVR box until the next evening when we get to see what everyone else was laughing about the night before.

It’s not all laughing, of course. While Stephen is a comedian, he is also a very philosophical and intellectual person. That can come out much more readily in his new show, where he gets to be (somewhat) more himself, as opposed to his former idiot-pundit persona on The Colbert Report. It must be a relief, especially when dealing with such sensitive topics as losing a son, as in the case of the interview with Joe Biden. Stephen lost his father and two brothers to a plane crash when he was ten, so he knows a lot about loss. It’s good that he can let that human side show, now that he doesn’t have to be in character all the time.

How about you all? Are you watching Stephen late at night, on delay, or not at all? Of course, this applies to US folks more than those in other countries, unless you can view it on the web.

For anyone who wishes to watch the Biden interview, CBS has it posted in two segments: http://www.cbs.com/shows/the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert/video/Pc4LDUqN8wMyGkYP2ngp3WWQpNLfXpRz/vice-president-joe-biden-interview-part-1/
http://www.cbs.com/shows/the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert/video/E73677BA-3D99-0881-3FC2-BA98560FCC49/vice-president-joe-biden-interview-part-2/
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Linda’s prompt for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “temp.” Join us! Find out how here: http://lindaghill.com/2015/09/11/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-sept-1215/

SoCS: “Between the Dark and the Daylight”

One of my volunteer gigs is facilitating for a spirituality study group at my church. We meet on Wednesday mornings to read and discuss a book on a spiritual topic. After a summer break, we met for the first time this part week to begin reading Between the Dark and the Daylight by Joan Chittister.

The subtitle of the the book is Embracing the Contradictions of Life. We all feel that we need help with this!

Sister Joan begins by explaining that life is full of paradoxes and then illustrates the point through a series of relatively short chapters, with titles like “The Poverty of Plenty” and “The Sanity of Irrationality” and “The Certitude of Doubt”. Not that I have read the whole book yet. I like to keep a bit ahead of the group so that I am prepared to lead discussion, but I don’t like to be so far ahead that I am throwing in concepts from later chapters before we get to them.

It is a bit odd that I am facilitating the group because I am its junior member. OK – in most contexts I am not considered a “junior” but, at 54, I am the youngest. Many of the women – and we are all women, even though, theoretically, a man could choose to attend – have children in my age cohort.

I wound up doing it because the IHM sister who began the group decades ago needed to move on to some other duties and asked me to take it on. Do you know how difficult it is to say no to a sister when she asks you to do something for the parish? So I said yes, even though I didn’t feel qualified. Part of what makes it work is that I facilitate discussion rather than try to teach. The wisdom of the authors of the books we read plus the wisdom of the group carries us through.

It’s enlightening.
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This post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. The prompt this week was “light.” Join us! Find out how here: http://lindaghill.com/2015/09/04/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-sept-515/

SoCS: Poet

I am a poet. I claim the title, even though it isn’t the way I make a living or something for which I have academic credentials. (Realistically, very few poets make a living at poetry.)

I read an essay a couple of years ago by a young, credentialed poet, who was published and had been an editor, but who still felt he shouldn’t be called a poet because he wasn’t suffering for his art in a garret somewhere.

I, however, don’t make it that complicated for myself.

I considered myself a poet before I was even published because it was what I felt I am, in the same way that I am a daughter, a spouse, a mother, a woman, a musician.

It’s what I am, not what I do.

Maybe it is easier for me because I don’t do paid work, so I don’t have a ready-made answer when someone asks what I do, by which they nearly always mean “what is your job?”

I can claim to be a poet, because it is a mode of expression that is important to me and that I have been working on developing.

I am also a late-developing poet, given that I have only started writing seriously in my fifties. In the last two years, I have been working on improving my poems through participating with the Binghamton Poetry Project (a community workshop run by grad students at Binghamton University), a group of local poets who meet regularly to critique each other’s work, and a new women’s group called Sappho’s Circle.

I am about to take another big step as a poet – attending a residency/workshop. I have been angsting/mulling this over the last couple of days, which you can read about here and here.

So, I think this weekend I am going to register.

It’s one of those things that we poets do.

Because of who we are.
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This post of part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. The prompt this week is “four-letter word.” Join us! Find out how here: http://lindaghill.com/2015/08/28/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-2915/

SoCS: Top of JC’s Mind

…because, seriously, when the prompt is “mind”, how could I not?

I started Top of JC’s Mind almost two years ago because several people told me that I should start a blog. I had originally planned to call it Top of My Mind, but that was already taken, so I put my initials in the title instead.

I know that I couldn’t contain myself to a single topic, so I set out to write about whatever is on the top of my mind, but that isn’t quite true.

You see, the top of my mind is a pretty crowded space. If I wrote about everything that was on the top of my mind in any given day, I wouldn’t have time to do anything else.

So, I write only a bit of what is at the top of my mind – and those bits have been distributed differently than I originally envisioned.

I had thought that I would write a lot about fracking – or anti-fracking, really – because I spent many moons writing commentary on it as part of the anti-fracking grassroots in New York State. And there is some writing in that vein, along with climate change and other environmental themes, but, with the (mostly) ban in place, that has slowed down, perhaps much to the relief of readers, as well as fracktivists.

I also thought that I would post more poetry than I do. The reason is that I am trying to publish in literary journals, nearly all of whom will only consider work that is not previously published. And, for the most part, that means that if they can google it, they won’t accept it, even if it is only out on my little blog with a dozen views. Consequently, I don’t put too many of my poems here unless they have appeared elsewhere first. Generally, the rights revert back to me after publication.

I have written more about family and personal experiences than I intended, largely due to circumstances. A year ago, our elders, Nana, Paco, and Grandma, all ran into health challenges and the top, middle, and bottom of my mind were all pretty much filled up with care-taking and concern. Then, there are the more fun family things to post, like spending five weeks in Hawai’i with my daughter E.

I do want to get back to posting more about topics, such as feminism, politics, and religion/ethics. The life of the mind is important to me. I just wish there was a more direct and faster way to get my thoughts onto the (computer) page.

Although that would be overwhelming.

No one needs that much Top of JC’s Mind.

Except for me, of course, for whom there is no escape…
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This post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday. This week’s prompt is “mind.” Join us! Find out how here: http://lindaghill.com/2015/08/21/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-2215/

new follower record

Thanks to the combination of my SoCS post and my 500(ish) follower post, which was re-blogged by OM of HarsH ReaLiTy, I set a new record for followers on August 16: eight, breaking my old record of seven.

Thanks, everyone! Now I am up to 510!

SoCS: the fight of the bumblebee

It’s not often that I run away from something – okay, it’s not often that I run, period – but this past week, I did.

I was out mowing the lawn, using our electric rechargeable lawn mower, which I convinced my husband to get a few years ago so I could help with the mowing. I had trouble even starting our gas-powered one and wanted a lawnmower with a smaller carbon footprint. So, while I don’t have decades of experience with lawn-mowing, I’m not totally new at it either.

While we live in a suburban-style neighborhood, we and many of our neighbors have more rural-style lawns, meaning that among the grasses there are other plants, some of which flower. Depending on the month, our lawn has wild strawberry blossoms, violets, creeping charlie, dandelions, clover, and other flowers blossoming. Where there are flowers, of course, there are bees and we are used to seeing them as we mow. They generally buzz away from the mower to find another flower that isn’t in its path, with bumblebees being the mellowest, just moseying slowly away.

I was really surprised, then, when a bumblebee came around the corner of our shed and headed straight at me. Startled, I ran away, even tripping and falling in my haste – and getting grass stains on my pants.

I felt sheepish about being chased away by a docile bumblebee and, determined to finish the little patch of lawn left, went back to the mower. After a couple more episodes of bumblebee-chasing, I realized that they were flying in and out from under the shed, which meant that they must have built a nest under it. By that point, I was almost done and was staying away from the shed, so I thought I was safe.

But, no.

One of the bumblebees, obviously upset by my continued presence, followed me back to the garage as I headed back to it to plug in the the mower, got under my shirt-sleeve, and stung me.

In the not-the-most-mature reaction, I screamed, batted it to the garage floor, and hurried inside the house. I called my husband and told him I was scared and didn’t know what to do. Because my mom is allergic to bee stings, I had grown up being scared of bees and had only been stung once by a yellowjacket when I was a child. My husband, on the other hand, has been stung many times over the years. He calmly told me to take a couple of benadryl and ice the sting. It was getting near time to come home, so he said he would leave and be there in a few minutes.

The ice helped with the pain and, when he arrived, he made sure there was no stinger in my arm. He looked up some information that confirmed that bumblebees, unlike some other species, don’t have barbed stingers, so, good news – the stinger doesn’t remain lodged in the victim but – bad news – they can sting multiple times without dying. They also are not aggressive unless they are defending a nest. Yup. Got that fact right, too.

I am all healed up now and none the worse for wear. I haven’t needed to go back out to mow, but, if I ever have to run away from a bee again, I’m not going to go back out and try to finish.

I learned my lesson.
*****
This post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. The prompt this week was to build the post around a word that ended with “-ay.” Join us! Find out how here: http://lindaghill.com/2015/08/14/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-1515/

SoCS: Saying good-bye to Jon Stewart

My last brush with enthusiasm was watching the last episode with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show last night. It actually aired Thursday night, but for years my husband and I have recorded it for later viewing. We aren’t generally up watching television at 11:00 PM when The Daily Show is on in our time zone.

The audience was enthusiastic in greeting Jon, of course, and also the parade of returning correspondents, especially John Oliver and Stephen Colbert. Stephen got to do the official scripted tribute which involved copious, geeky Tolkien references, and then went off-script with a lovely thank you to Jon about how he was such a great example and helped them all learn to be better in their careers and as persons.

The audience was more subdued with the recorded segment on all the behind-the-scene people and Jon’s own message and good-bye, which was appropriate as it was more serious and because people love Jon and will miss hearing from him.

Our family will miss him, too, although I am glad he is getting to go out at the top of his game and to be with his family – and then he can do other things professionally as the spirit and opportunities arise. Jon is only a few years younger than I am and The Daily Show is pitched toward the young adult demographic, so it’s not surprising that he would want to turn things over to the younger generation, like incoming host Trevor and the current young correspondents.

The enthusiasm ramped back up at the end of the show, when Jon’s Moment of Zen involved a live performance by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. It was nice to see Jon and his family and all the correspondents jumping up and down and dancing. It was nice to have a happy send-off.

Thanks for everything, Jon! Have a great next phase of life, whatever you decide to do!
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “enthuse.” Come join us! Find out how here: http://lindaghill.com/2015/08/07/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-815/

SoCS: ready or not

I put off starting to write this post, thinking I would surely feel more ready later on.

Well – no.

Sometimes, you wake up feeling ready for anything.

Today is not one of those days.

It’s more a day to peruse emails and play games and go for a walk or just sit.

Not ready for much of anything – or at least much of anything that involves deep thought.

Maybe tomorrow.
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This post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. This week’s prompt is “ready.” Join us! Find out how here: http://lindaghill.com/2015/07/31/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-115/

SoCS: vision

Last week, I had my annual vision exam. I have worn glasses since I was seven. I was near-sighted as a child, but now I have far-sightedness, too, related to age.

And my in-between vision is not great either, so I have been wearing progressives, which try to help you see well across all distances.

Last year, I finally gave up and got a special pair of glasses called an office lens. This pair of glasses is not good for long distances, like driving, but they are really good for short and intermediate distance, so I can read with them and, most importantly, use them when I am at my desktop computer without having to tilt my head at a weird angle and make my neck get a crick. However, they still let me see clearly about ten feet away, so I can use them for walking around the house without having to switch glasses every time I get up from the computer. I really love these glasses and I find my eyes are much less tired at the end of the day because of them.

I am thinking of replacing my progressives that I wear most of the time with bifocals so that I will still be able to drive and read and do kitchen work and such. Using my desktop is my main intermediate vision task, so I will switch to my office lens for that, but have the bifocal for general wear and being out and about.

And, someday in the future, I will need to have cataract surgery and will probably see better with the new implantable lenses than I have seen when I was six.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is: “vis.” the post should “use a word, or tie your post’s theme around a word, that contains the letters VIS, in that order.” Join us! Details here: http://lindaghill.com/2015/07/24/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-2515/

SoCS: flying

I used to like to fly. The first time I flew I was in my early twenties and I loved looking out the window at all the landforms I had studied in geology and the clouds I had studied in meteorology. Those were also the days when checked baggage was free and so were snacks and meals. I even remember getting hot towels to freshen up at the end of a long flight – and this was in coach, not first class.

Now, I don’t like flying as much. Flights are really packed and service is – ummm – let’s say spotty. For example, on my recent flight back to NYS from Hawai’i we had blankets for the flight over the ocean in the afternoon but no blankets for the overnight flight from LAX to Philly. The airline sent me an email to order food for that flight, except they don’t serve food that late at night. Originally, I had a morning flight into Binghamton from Philly, but the airline cancelled it so I was in Philly for five and half hours before getting to come home in the afternoon.

I guess in a way it is lucky that I don’t fly very often. Less to complain about and more money for my bank account.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is: “fly/flies/flew/flu/flue.” Join us! Find out how here: http://lindaghill.com/2015/07/17/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-1815/

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