Kathy Knechtges's Open Salon Blog

The Unexpected Joy Of Family History Blogging!

Tue, 5 Mar 2013 15:03:56 -0500

As an older blogger, I am delighted to have just stumbled upon a new writing thrill. A younger cousin of mine recently suggested that I help form a private family history website on Facebook.

I had really been missing the huge clan we used to have in my hometown. My mother had six sisters and they were best friends. There were numerous cousins, with family picnics on Lake Michigan where all of us jumped the huge breakers while hanging on to a precarious section rope on the beach. And there were all the traditional family dinners with standard menus, including whipped cream fruit salad.

Families were much larger then ... but now most of my relatives have died or moved out of our economically depressed area. Mom died a few years ago. at 88, and she had become incredibly close to my husband and I. She was the last of the Mohicans.

This much younger cousin I mentioned is part of a fading remnant of my once close, active and vibrant family in the area. She friended me after her father, my first cousin, died recently. When she suggested a closed family website to post pictures, it immediately struck me as a great idea.

I have some really old pictures from my Mom, and her sisters who died before her. I posted a few charming gems and tried to begin to explain our family's dim history. Since all of my older relatives are now dead, I realized that much of our history has died with them -- the background color, the stories and jokes. I began doing research on the wonderful free Morman website FamilySearch.org.. To my surprise, the younger relatives were excited and eagerly read everything I wrote. I never would have dreamed that they were that interested. Perhaps with divorce, two-child families, and all working mothers, they missed some of our huge gatherings for lazy summer days at the beach that were so frequent, and so easily arranged.

And I was instantly in love with the writing process of it! I felt an explosion of creative energy that I hadn't felt in years. I actually regained the effortless creativity I had had as a child.

As a younger writer, I eventually felt frustration with journalism writing. It seemed too mechanical with the style, limitations and rules. And I always froze up when writing under pressure. When I developed depression in my 30's, that seemed to make writing even harder and slower. I still loved it, but it took much longer.

But now, there comes this return of effortless inspiration! ... The stories pour out from nowhere, and fill me with joy. And my family keeps reading.

This reminds me of something I read in an absolute gem of a tiny book "Advice For Photographers: The Next Step," by Al Weber. He is a long- time professional photographer who also loves teaching adults how they can make it in the creative world at any age. I find it a wondrous bible of wisdom on creativity in general. He stresses that you have to go on and try new things with your art, or you get stagnant.

My family history blog gives me a whole new challenge as a writer. I feel totally freed, making it up as I write, having few ground rules. I also love my family, so it serves that need.

And also, amazingly, it is bringing my clan back together! I am interacting with relatives I never knew that well, or haven't seen in years. No longer confined to our hometown, our internet family now spans the whole country!

All The World's A "Crazy" Stage!

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 15:10:36 -0400

(National Park Service Photo -- Chaco Culture Night Sky M33)

" All the world's a stage," said William Shakespeare.

If Shakespeare is right, it explains why the world is such a mess!

We are all born into a Major Play that the world's actors can't even get together on. The world's actors differ on what the Big Play's meaning is, or should be. They disagree, sometimes violently, on what the next acts should be.

Each of us are also born into our own individual play. We must craft a part for ourselves within the confusing larger drama. At least in a real play at the theatre, we would have all of our lines written for us, and our parts fleshed out. We would know all the acts, the last act, and the theme of the play.Even with all this help, acting in a play in the theatre would be challenging enough for us.

In our real daily lives, we are all making up our own parts as we go along! Many of the acts are not even under our control. They will be dictated by other people, and other forces. And there will be unknown outcomes waiting for us at many turns.

Every day, we must get up and improvise our roles, making up our lines and actions on the stage. And our roles are usually, in some way, on a stage on display before others.

All the other actors we encounter are also improvising their roles. All of us are often acting within several ongoing plays at the same time.

How could we not make mistakes?

How can we not have compassion for ourselves?

How can we not have compassion for all the other actors?

How unbelievable it is that we are all just winging it on this awesome, wonderful and terrible Stage!

Fear No Maggot.

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 12:09:16 -0400

Standing at my kitchen sink, I catch a glimpse of a bird's wing on my outdoor grill cover, just outside the window. I move to see it better. "Oh God!!! What now???" A dead bird has draped itself between my outdoor grill cover and my deck rail! Birds don't drape themselves over things.... it is an unnatural posture. What is this, The Bird Creep Twilight Zone??

It started last summer when I noticed a bunch of dark, threadbare-coated Starlings hanging around my large, beautiful and serene yard. An immense, ugly flock soon took up permanent residence on my deck. They would perch on the deck rails and buzz in and out of the yard, constantly pooping on my deck. The deck was soon completely coated with liquid white and black crap that absolutely reeked. I tried to scare them away, running out constantly and banging pans together. They would scatter and all be back in five minutes. I would clean the deck once again, using rubber gloves and disinfecting cleaner, and go out on a quick errand. When I got back, the deck was totally covered with reeking excrement again. Soon the starlings were so bold that they wouldn't even leave the yard when I ran out to scare them; they would just move away a bit, studying me with bored annoyance . -- I bought two big fake plastic owls. That worked for one day. Then they just perched on the owls, and crapped on them too.

I was beside myself! My deck and much of my backyard were becoming permanently unusable!

Spotting my next-door neighbor outside, I confided my alarm. She told me that the flock would eventually move on, after they had their babies.And to my immense relief, they did! Finally all flew away after about three weeks.

My husband and I left for our yearly week at summer camp. The morning after we got back, I was eating breakfast, when I noticed a pile of white substance on my backyard deck rail through my glass deck door window. I bolted up and outside, seeing that the deck rail was buried under a large thick mountain of white and gray bird crap. Following the poop trail upward to its source, I saw a gold and white pigeon sitting on a small ledge between the deck ceiling and the garage roof. I scared the bird off, but during the next several days, I realized that the bird had permanently moved in to the alcove while we were gone to camp, and now felt a sense of happy ownership. I felt bad this time. I had to agree that the ledge was the perfect home; safely tucked away, out of the wind and rain, with a bird's eye view of my huge yard's graceful trees and shrubs. I hated to evict the poor thing, and the gold and white pigeon looked really determined, hurt and put out.

If only the bird had taken up housekeeping in one of the trees in the yard instead, that would be fine! The mountain of crap from even this one pigeon would, again, render the deck permanently unusable. I stuffed the ledge with rags and various fillers, but it just perched higher on the roof.
Finally, after several more painful days, a deer and rabbit repellent spray convinced my new tenant to move on.

NOW, JUST A MONTH LATER, I THINK, I STAND AT MY KITCHEN WINDOW, SEEING ANOTHER BIRD DOING WEIRD THINGS ON MY DECK!!
I just can't take it tonight, I am too tired, and I’ll have to deal with it in the morning.

The time to face it arrives this morning. I open my deck door and turn around. I AM FACE TO FACE WITH A DEAD ROBIN SPREAD EAGLE ON MY DECK, CHEST ALREADY HALF-EATEN BY THOUSANDS OF SWARMING MAGGOTS. AND THE ROBIN HAS BEEN HUNG!!! IT HAS SOME KIND OF FLAT WHITE PLASTIC STRING NOOSE AROUND HIS NECK! WHO WOULD HANG A ROBIN ON MY DECK!!!! DO I HAVE SOME ENEMY I DON’T KNOW ABOUT?? This situation is no longer mildly amusing. A fire of fear, anxiety and paranoia flows up my spinal cord like lava.

HOW DO I GET IT OFF MY DECK?? CAN MAGGOTS GET IN AND CONTAMINATE YOUR HOUSE? DON’T TELL ME, I DON’T WANT TO KNOW! CAN MAGGOTS INFECT YOUR BODY IF YOU TOUCH THEM? DON’T TELL ME, I DON’T WANT TO KNOW!!!!.

I feel too stiff with paranoia to deal with it. I know that some people would just pick it up and be done with it. But I have had too many repulsive battles with various bugs in the past. I have had scabies, a mite skin infection. My former husband had an affair and gave me head lice once. I have had to use bug bombs for sand fleas before. In our last apartment, we had a nightmare with little red spiders crawling all over one of our bedrooms. They were very difficult to get rid of. I also am paranoid about spraying toxic pesticides all over the house, which you usually have to do for these infestations.

Checking into health info about bird crap, it just confirms my terror: I find that you can get serious diseases from inhaling it; and that the birds carry parasites that can spread.

Besides this, I have OCD, ( Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.) I can get obsessed with irrational fears. Even if I know it is irrational, I can’t stop it sometimes.

FEAR of getting myself into another time- consuming infestation hassle. Paralyzing dread, horror, revulsion, danger, CAN’T TOUCH THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

While studying how I am going to get this rotting corpse off my deck without touching it, I notice that the end of the white ribbon noose rope is stuck into one of my siding panels on my house.

Oh, I see what happened! The bird was not hung by a person, it hung itself! Was it flying, carrying a string to fill its nest, and the string got caught in the siding? It tried to free the string from the siding while perched on the deck rail, but in moving around, the string got wound around its neck. Then, the more the bird struggled, the more tightly the noose closed around its neck. That explains the bird’s weird posture. It simply died struggling to free itself while hanging from the deck rail right next to the grill cover.

I have to somehow free the bird from the noose without touching anything disgusting. I put on garden gloves, and cut the white string up near the siding. Once free, I push the bird off the tangled string knot using a large stick. It hits the deck floor, and numerous maggots fall off the bird’s chest, scattering on the deck. The countless wriggling maggots, already moving toward something else to contaminate, terrify me. How can I avoid them getting on me when I am trying to remove the corpse? I just feel t0o frozen and paralyzed with fear and paranoia. ... I decide to just walk away for the afternoon, defeated for another day.

I know it is ridiculous to be so paralyzed by this. I just start praying to be delivered from the grip of this irrational fear. For many years, I have found peace in meditation. One thing I have been taught to meditate on is the chant OM. They say it is the basic universal vibration that contains all other vibrations. It sounds like the vibration of a huge church bell. I find it a soothing.

The moment comes, the next day. I am no longer afraid. Waves of the ocean crash in a rhythmic roar. I can deal with this, carefully. The gongs of a million church bells vibrate. A swarm of maggots wriggle, eating dead flesh. If is just part of the natural world. It is all just part of God, OM. God's cleanup squad, removing dead bodies from the planet by eating them up.
I no longer fear maggots. I can do this.

Attitude Toward GM Reveals Cancer Eating The Country.

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 16:08:17 -0400

From "New Worlds In Engineering<" 1940 Detroit, Michigan

Media GM haters are constantly hoping that GM will somehow still fail, despite Obama's loan package. This is a symptom of everything that is wrong with the country. I am getting really tired of writing about this, but I can't stay silent while our life blood continues to drip away.

Unions in the private sector are now threatened with extinction, and the conservatives definitely want them to completely die out. Then business owners will be feudal lords like they were before unions. Conservatives are absolutely correct, unions are the best friends that average American workers ever had. Since unions have weakened, so have opportunities, wages and benefits.

It is was a huge mistake for liberals to not support unionized manufacturing workers by buying their products. They undid the bloody struggle of generations. American cars are greatly improved. I have had a Chevy Venture Van for several years and it has been virtually flawless.

We don't want foreigners to take complete control of a major industry. We would just lose many more thousands of jobs than we have already lost this way. We have lost a vast blue collar middle class that used to support the Democratic party because of this. If there is no American industry, foreigners will have every incentive to ship all our remaining manufacturing jobs to China where they can pay nothing compared to what they are now paying in the South.

Americans were sold an idiot experimental theory by idiot economists. Americans chose buying cheap merchandise from all over the world instead of supporting good unions jobs in this country.-- And thousands of nonunion factory, supplier, and high tech jobs, too, like engineering. We simply can not have a vibrant economy without a vital industrial sector. Our economy has become unbalanced. We live in an era of world trade, but American leaders failed to manage it so that is worked for American workers. Leaders in other countries have done far better in making it work for them.

The whole principle of unions is working people sticking together. If they do not sick together, it does not work.

Now that they have crippled private sector unions by years of attack and carping, they are obviously concentrating on eliminating the only remaining strong unions in the public sector.

I am disappointed in Obama and the Dems on this issue. They inherited an Economic Crisis as the main problem. They may have done good things, but they did not make helping the unemployed their very top priority. Many African-American young people in the inner cities have never had a job. Obama would have been the perfect leader to help bring them into the mainstream, and work on the crime that makes their lives miserable. A major historic opportunity has been lost. During the Great Depression, the U.S. had a vast public works program that was open to any unemployed young person. This gave them critical job experience. Roosevelt also quickly moved to strengthen unions as part of a NEW DEAL

Today, our employers brazenly violate federal union laws to the point where our unions are almost worthless. I got this from a union lawyer who noticed this way back in the 1980's. Why was the currently proposed Employee Free Choice Act to strengthen unions not a top Obama priority? It has died on the vine.

Working class Americans are not "voting against their own interests." The Dems have abandoned them. How many decades do they have to wait from President Carter on down?

I believe that liberals and moderates will soon realize that not standing solidly with all unionized workers was a huge self-defeating mistake.

I can't wait for the day when our proud American union tradition gets back on track!

Thank You, Salon, For OS.

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 17:06:50 -0400

I will never stop being grateful for the beautiful free resource of OS, a magic neighborhood for writers. Such a thing is rare on this earth.