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the stand: chapters 11 & 12
meanwhile, chapter 11 finds us back in new york city, and larry underwood has made his way across town to the chemical bank building where his mom is head housekeeper. they have a long drawn out conversation during which alice underwood tells larry that she's proud of him for doing something with the talent that she always knew he had, even if she doesnt like his style of music. he's still a taker, she says, but not a bad guy. he tells her he loves her and runs off to see a movie (on her dime, at her insistence). the movie is a popular one, starring freddie kruger, with a packed house, including some guy in the back with a very persistant cough.
i'm glad larry got to see a bit of emotion from his mother. i think he has seen her as a hardened woman throughout the years, but seeing the flash of tears in her eyes made larry realize that she is still a woman and still his mother and she does love him. it's just hard for her to express it. in a lot of ways i can compare her to carla goldsmith, frannie's mother. they both lost someone they loved earlier than they should have and it turned them hard inside.
let's morph back to ogunquit, maine, for chapter 12. frannie is waiting in the museum (aka, her mother's parlor) to break the baby bump news. frannie's parents do indeed live together but the parlor is unequivocally her mother's. it's full of her mother's heirlooms: a handmade grandfather clock passed down for umpteenth generations, her mother's area rug, a genealogy scrapbook of her own heritage that she compiled herself. roses entombed forever under glass cases and various other decorations adorn this sacred room of tea parties and serious conversation. no traces of peter goldsmith are to be found. this is carla's room only and when you enter this room, you live by carla's standards. frannie has no good memories of the parlor and in fact she hates the room. she would rather be in her father's work room, where nothing but good memories abide. peter's work room holds an almost wonderland-like existence in frannie's mind, and she'd give anything to be a little girl there now. but alas, she is now an adult and most certainly pregnant and waiting to face her mother's wrath.
i love the way king tells the story of carla's parlor. he paints a picture of a time all but gone, and since he wrote the book originally in the 70s, this scenario fits then perfectly. i'm sure most of it would still hold up in the 90s when the book was re-released because there are still people out there who would shudder at the thought of their daughter becoming pregnant out of wedlock, and not for religious or ethical reasons. all carla is worried about is her image to her friends and her community. she could care less about frannie's feelings or well-being. i think also that deep down inside carla doesnt want to lose frannie the way she lost fred and frannie being pregnant is a sure sign of being grown up, and actually having the child is proof that frannie is no longer a child herself. but no matter what frannie does, it isnt going to be good enough to suit carla, because carla's baby (fred) is gone and frannie will never live up to what carla wants.
so frannie spills the beans and carla goes off the deep end; she threatens to cut frannie off financially and accuses frannie of behaving like "a bitch in heat." peter finally steps in and puts his foot (and the pimp hand) down, and it's about time. he should have done it years ago, in my opinion. carla basically reaches the hysteria stage after peter has his say and eventually she retires to her bedroom. the chapter ends with peter and frannie comforting each other in the parlor.
i feel bad for frannie at this point, even though she's not a character that i like very much, yet. i also feel bad for carla for the simple fact that she's alienating her daughter in return for a social life and the way things "should be." carla has woven herself into a cocoon of selfishness and there's not much time for making amends.
i'm glad larry got to see a bit of emotion from his mother. i think he has seen her as a hardened woman throughout the years, but seeing the flash of tears in her eyes made larry realize that she is still a woman and still his mother and she does love him. it's just hard for her to express it. in a lot of ways i can compare her to carla goldsmith, frannie's mother. they both lost someone they loved earlier than they should have and it turned them hard inside.
let's morph back to ogunquit, maine, for chapter 12. frannie is waiting in the museum (aka, her mother's parlor) to break the baby bump news. frannie's parents do indeed live together but the parlor is unequivocally her mother's. it's full of her mother's heirlooms: a handmade grandfather clock passed down for umpteenth generations, her mother's area rug, a genealogy scrapbook of her own heritage that she compiled herself. roses entombed forever under glass cases and various other decorations adorn this sacred room of tea parties and serious conversation. no traces of peter goldsmith are to be found. this is carla's room only and when you enter this room, you live by carla's standards. frannie has no good memories of the parlor and in fact she hates the room. she would rather be in her father's work room, where nothing but good memories abide. peter's work room holds an almost wonderland-like existence in frannie's mind, and she'd give anything to be a little girl there now. but alas, she is now an adult and most certainly pregnant and waiting to face her mother's wrath.
i love the way king tells the story of carla's parlor. he paints a picture of a time all but gone, and since he wrote the book originally in the 70s, this scenario fits then perfectly. i'm sure most of it would still hold up in the 90s when the book was re-released because there are still people out there who would shudder at the thought of their daughter becoming pregnant out of wedlock, and not for religious or ethical reasons. all carla is worried about is her image to her friends and her community. she could care less about frannie's feelings or well-being. i think also that deep down inside carla doesnt want to lose frannie the way she lost fred and frannie being pregnant is a sure sign of being grown up, and actually having the child is proof that frannie is no longer a child herself. but no matter what frannie does, it isnt going to be good enough to suit carla, because carla's baby (fred) is gone and frannie will never live up to what carla wants.
so frannie spills the beans and carla goes off the deep end; she threatens to cut frannie off financially and accuses frannie of behaving like "a bitch in heat." peter finally steps in and puts his foot (and the pimp hand) down, and it's about time. he should have done it years ago, in my opinion. carla basically reaches the hysteria stage after peter has his say and eventually she retires to her bedroom. the chapter ends with peter and frannie comforting each other in the parlor.
i feel bad for frannie at this point, even though she's not a character that i like very much, yet. i also feel bad for carla for the simple fact that she's alienating her daughter in return for a social life and the way things "should be." carla has woven herself into a cocoon of selfishness and there's not much time for making amends.
early this morning
it's early in the morning and i really should be in bed. i have a field trip of sorts planned for today. i'm going to hang out with my bestest jackie at her house for a while. yeah, that's a field trip for me. lol. boring life huh? i like my boring life though. it's quiet and drama-free, for the most part. i have a great family and great friends (they also qualify as family, it's a two-fer deal yay!) who make me happy and i hope whom i make happy in return. every day i wake up i know it's a great day to be alive, and that's why you will rarely ever hear me complain. i might mention something that's wrong but that's not the same as complaining. that's not to say that i dont ever complain. sometimes i'll get in a tizzy here at home and i'll have my little tantrum and then i'm good for a while but i guess that's just human nature. is there anyone who doesnt have a tizzy once in a while? i seriously doubt it. if so, they're probably on the edge of becoming a serial killer or having a psychotic break of some type. yeah, i watch csi and criminal minds, i know about this stuff! HAHA
james, luke, and i watched a couple of good movies tonight. clash of the titans (the new one) and avatar (the blue people). both were pretty good. i've put off watching avatar because to be honest i didnt know what it was about and it just didnt look like anything i'd be interested in but once i started watching it i liked it. it was a heartwarming story, really. last night we watched the tourist with johnny depp and angelina jolie. that started off very slowly and i wasnt sure what kind of movie it was going to be. for some reason i thought it was going to be a thriller of some type but it wasnt. it was more of an action/mystery and it had a little comedy thrown in for good measure and i loved it. i predicted the outcome way early in the movie. eventually james is going to stop watching movies with me because i do that on a regular basis lol. i've just watched enough movies that i pick up on subtle clues. not all the time though. a lot of times i miss them by a mile. like in book of eli, i totally missed the boat that one lol. if you've seen the movie you know what i'm talking about.
anyway, i'm just wasting time lol. everyone here's asleep but amberly will be waking up in about an hour or so to get ready for band picture day. i need to go to sleep so i am gonna close this entry, so if you're reading this, i'm probably asleep by now.
thanks for reading, i appreciate you, faithful reader.
james, luke, and i watched a couple of good movies tonight. clash of the titans (the new one) and avatar (the blue people). both were pretty good. i've put off watching avatar because to be honest i didnt know what it was about and it just didnt look like anything i'd be interested in but once i started watching it i liked it. it was a heartwarming story, really. last night we watched the tourist with johnny depp and angelina jolie. that started off very slowly and i wasnt sure what kind of movie it was going to be. for some reason i thought it was going to be a thriller of some type but it wasnt. it was more of an action/mystery and it had a little comedy thrown in for good measure and i loved it. i predicted the outcome way early in the movie. eventually james is going to stop watching movies with me because i do that on a regular basis lol. i've just watched enough movies that i pick up on subtle clues. not all the time though. a lot of times i miss them by a mile. like in book of eli, i totally missed the boat that one lol. if you've seen the movie you know what i'm talking about.
anyway, i'm just wasting time lol. everyone here's asleep but amberly will be waking up in about an hour or so to get ready for band picture day. i need to go to sleep so i am gonna close this entry, so if you're reading this, i'm probably asleep by now.
thanks for reading, i appreciate you, faithful reader.
the stand: chapters 9 & 10
****SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS****
we're in arkansas when chapter 9 opens. enter nick, a deaf-mute drifter, who is currently receiving a down-home ass-whooping by a few local "good ole boys." if they were half as smart as they are brutish, they may actually realize that he's deaf, but all they care about is exacting their pound of flesh for whatever slight they perceive he visited upon them. so the thugs rough nick up pretty good and leave him for dead; as a matter of fact they try to make sure he ends up that way by throwing him out in front of an oncoming vehicle. it turns out the occupant of the vehicle is a doctor who fixes him up and brings him into town to the local sheriff's department. nick is unconscious during all this and awakes to find himself in a cell. the local sheriff, john baker, listens to nick's story and decides he wont hold nick on any charges. well, that's mighty nice of him, eh? anyway, we find out that the head thug in charge is sheriff baker's brother in law. wonderful. just another small town perk, ain't they grand?? nick decides that no matter the consequences, he wants to pursue legal action against the brutes. sheriff baker will help him, and he commiserates that it's turning out to be a wonderful day; first a drifter in trouble, then finding out his brother in law is the culprit, and to top it all off he's got a summer cold coming on....
well, i guess we know what that means huh? sheriff baker is a bit "blue" and nick is our next main character. nick reminds me a lot of dale "barbie" barbara from king's under the dome. king has a lot of similar themes in many of his epic stories: a drifter, a gang of hometown thugs, a down-home sheriff, and an old, wise character (usually black).
chapter ten takes us back to larry underwood. it's the morning after a night on the town, full of drinking and apparently some sex. he's in some woman's apartment and she's half-naked, cooking him breakfast. sounds good huh? eh...not really. he doesnt remember much (what he does remember, i dont really wanna explain here lol) but he DOES remember that he left his mom's apartment without a goodbye note or anything. not so good in the gratitude department, are we, larry? mom goes out and buys you lots of great groceries and you leave her high and dry in exchange for a night of drinking and an oral hygienist (dont know how she is on hygiene, but she's great on the oral, so says larry). so when larry bails on the chick, she gets mad and tells him he "ain't no nice guy" after all and that's the only reason she went with him to start with. larry leaves her apartment with a headache and a bit of a guilty conscience. he remembers when he threw everyone out of the beach house back in L.A. and how they basically said the same thing: you ain't no nice guy. but larry did the right thing then, and he wants to do the ultimate right thing now: find his mom and make things right. their relationship isnt so kosher anyway, so he ought to do his best to make this right. so we end chapter 10 with larry in a cab on the way to the bank where his mom is a housekeeper.
character development is still in the works majorly at this point in the book. we see the people who are getting sick and dying, and there's the people who arent. the virus has made it from california to georgia to maine and to arkansas so far and lots of places in between. and it's only been a few days. surely all hell is going to break loose very soon.
thanks for tuning in, and i'll see y'all tomorrow for chapters 11&12.
we're in arkansas when chapter 9 opens. enter nick, a deaf-mute drifter, who is currently receiving a down-home ass-whooping by a few local "good ole boys." if they were half as smart as they are brutish, they may actually realize that he's deaf, but all they care about is exacting their pound of flesh for whatever slight they perceive he visited upon them. so the thugs rough nick up pretty good and leave him for dead; as a matter of fact they try to make sure he ends up that way by throwing him out in front of an oncoming vehicle. it turns out the occupant of the vehicle is a doctor who fixes him up and brings him into town to the local sheriff's department. nick is unconscious during all this and awakes to find himself in a cell. the local sheriff, john baker, listens to nick's story and decides he wont hold nick on any charges. well, that's mighty nice of him, eh? anyway, we find out that the head thug in charge is sheriff baker's brother in law. wonderful. just another small town perk, ain't they grand?? nick decides that no matter the consequences, he wants to pursue legal action against the brutes. sheriff baker will help him, and he commiserates that it's turning out to be a wonderful day; first a drifter in trouble, then finding out his brother in law is the culprit, and to top it all off he's got a summer cold coming on....
well, i guess we know what that means huh? sheriff baker is a bit "blue" and nick is our next main character. nick reminds me a lot of dale "barbie" barbara from king's under the dome. king has a lot of similar themes in many of his epic stories: a drifter, a gang of hometown thugs, a down-home sheriff, and an old, wise character (usually black).
chapter ten takes us back to larry underwood. it's the morning after a night on the town, full of drinking and apparently some sex. he's in some woman's apartment and she's half-naked, cooking him breakfast. sounds good huh? eh...not really. he doesnt remember much (what he does remember, i dont really wanna explain here lol) but he DOES remember that he left his mom's apartment without a goodbye note or anything. not so good in the gratitude department, are we, larry? mom goes out and buys you lots of great groceries and you leave her high and dry in exchange for a night of drinking and an oral hygienist (dont know how she is on hygiene, but she's great on the oral, so says larry). so when larry bails on the chick, she gets mad and tells him he "ain't no nice guy" after all and that's the only reason she went with him to start with. larry leaves her apartment with a headache and a bit of a guilty conscience. he remembers when he threw everyone out of the beach house back in L.A. and how they basically said the same thing: you ain't no nice guy. but larry did the right thing then, and he wants to do the ultimate right thing now: find his mom and make things right. their relationship isnt so kosher anyway, so he ought to do his best to make this right. so we end chapter 10 with larry in a cab on the way to the bank where his mom is a housekeeper.
character development is still in the works majorly at this point in the book. we see the people who are getting sick and dying, and there's the people who arent. the virus has made it from california to georgia to maine and to arkansas so far and lots of places in between. and it's only been a few days. surely all hell is going to break loose very soon.
thanks for tuning in, and i'll see y'all tomorrow for chapters 11&12.
thursday afternoon
it's so hot outside! i cannot even fathom going outside for more than a couple minutes at the time. weather underground says it's 97 with a heat index of 106 and possibility of thunderstorms. i hope it DOES rain! it at least cools off for a little while during and after. plus, there's nothing like the smell of the cool rain hitting the sun-baked ground, the smell that rises out of the dirt and grass, even off the scorching pavement....it's heavenly. i really dont even know how to begin to describe it to you, except that there's a hint of wet soil with a pinch of sweet thrown in (courtesy: grass), not a sugar-sweet smell though. i guess you just have to be here when it happens, lol. i know i've talked about this a time or two but i love the rain (i guess you worked that out already if you've been following my blog very long). the weather page tells me it's raining right now in vidalia and that the temp there is 79!! that's almost 20 degrees difference! (didnt know you were gonna get a math lesson today, didja?) now james has gone out to cut the grass and i'm just gonna chill inside :)
so for the past 4 or 5 days i've had a pain down in the bottom of my left ear; it's intermittent but i'm still not liking it. it brings back not-so-pleasant memories of the ear infections i used to keep when i was a teenager. once, i had inner ear infections in BOTH ears at the SAME time! that was not pleasant, let me tell you. an ear infection brings dizziness (because your equilibrium is off) which spawns nausea; the infection itself brings fever, and your entire head feels like it's going to explode. your jaw hurts and don't even THINK about trying to eat anything. not that you could keep it down due to the nausea, anyway. if you've ever had one, you know what i'm talking about. it's been a long time since i've had an ear infection, probably 8 or 9 years, but i still remember the unpleasantness. you know, we can remember smells and tastes, but physical pain is one thing that we "forget." we remember that yeah it hurt and we remember that it was horrible, but we cant actually REMEMBER the pain. i've been broken and bruised and even given birth to two children and i remember that it hurt, but i dont recall the sharpness of the pain or the intensity of the hurt. i've heard other people say the same thing and it rings true for me so i just figure it's the same for everyone.....what do y'all think? can you remember the pain or just the fact that it hurt? leave me some comments and let me know your take on it....
meanwhile, i think i'm gonna have a quick nap and then read some more of the stand. remember, faithful reader, synopsis and commentary on chapters 9 and 10 coming up later tonight. stay tuned!
so for the past 4 or 5 days i've had a pain down in the bottom of my left ear; it's intermittent but i'm still not liking it. it brings back not-so-pleasant memories of the ear infections i used to keep when i was a teenager. once, i had inner ear infections in BOTH ears at the SAME time! that was not pleasant, let me tell you. an ear infection brings dizziness (because your equilibrium is off) which spawns nausea; the infection itself brings fever, and your entire head feels like it's going to explode. your jaw hurts and don't even THINK about trying to eat anything. not that you could keep it down due to the nausea, anyway. if you've ever had one, you know what i'm talking about. it's been a long time since i've had an ear infection, probably 8 or 9 years, but i still remember the unpleasantness. you know, we can remember smells and tastes, but physical pain is one thing that we "forget." we remember that yeah it hurt and we remember that it was horrible, but we cant actually REMEMBER the pain. i've been broken and bruised and even given birth to two children and i remember that it hurt, but i dont recall the sharpness of the pain or the intensity of the hurt. i've heard other people say the same thing and it rings true for me so i just figure it's the same for everyone.....what do y'all think? can you remember the pain or just the fact that it hurt? leave me some comments and let me know your take on it....
meanwhile, i think i'm gonna have a quick nap and then read some more of the stand. remember, faithful reader, synopsis and commentary on chapters 9 and 10 coming up later tonight. stay tuned!
the stand: chapters 6-8
i think i'm going to try to blog a little differently. as the chapters are getting longer, i think it's going to be harder to do a separate synopsis and commentary so i am just going to combine the two. let me know which you like better, reader.
chapter six puts us back with frannie goldsmith. remember her? she's the "little bit preggers" chick from chapter 2. frannie is 21 and in college in new hampshire but she's back in ogunquit, maine with her parents for the summer. right now, she comes home to find her father gardening and her mother gone shopping. i get the impression that her parents are well-to-do; her mother is in portland shopping for white gloves for a wedding. now i grew up poor and i never went out of town to shop for gloves, lol, so this is mainly what gives me the impression that they are indeed well-off financially. fran goes to see her father and tell him about the baby but before she does we learn a bit about carla, frannie's mother. she's an old-fashioned woman who finds it hard to believe that frannie's not at college husband-hunting. she also has a sharp tongue and apparently having that unleashed on you would be a bad idea. i think frannie is afraid of telling her mother about the baby but she's more afraid of telling her father, because his disapproval would be more devastating. she's probably had a lot of disapproval from mom over the years but dad is the one who's always "had her back." i can relate to frannie because i've got people in my life who i dont want to let down and then there's people i love who i know i cannot please no matter what i do and anything i do will always be a bit of a disappointment. peter goldsmith has learned over the years to bite his tongue and i guess frannie has learned to do the same thing. so frannie tells her dad she's pregnant and jess (babydaddy) has offered to marry her or pay for an abortion, whichever frannie chooses to do. peter assures her he's not disappointed in her and he doesnt blame her but her mom will have a lot to say about blame.
all in all we learn more about frannie and her personality. she gets the giggles too much and apparently her mom used to too. frannie finds it hard to believe her mom ever giggled or drank beer or ever had a good time. peter explains that the death of fred, frannie's older brother, changed carla and she basically shut off when he died. fred was her favorite and frannie is peter's. frannie decides an abortion wouldn't be cool and that she wants to keep the baby. frannie is still a young woman and the world has been good to her, for the most part. but frannie's about to fall on hard times and the fate of her and the baby are hanging in the balance. ooh the plot thickens!!
let's travel down the eastern shoreline to georgia for chapter 7. remember vic palfrey? he was keeping bill hapscomb company at the texaco when the state patrolman came to give them the heads-up about the pathologists. well, vic is in a hospital bed somewhere in atlanta but not just a regular hospital, mind you; this one has steel doors and doctors in spacesuits. so we know vic is very sick and he's being treated and observed by an arsenal doctors and scientists but vic is delirious and his "magic hour" is over. the whole texaco crew and their families are in atlanta, including norm "jerk" bruett, lila, and the kids.
woowee i loves me some stu redman, he's my fav character in the whole story. not to mention the fact that every time i read it now i see gary sinise, who played stu in the movie version. and i loves me some gary sinise. lol. anyway, back to the story....chapter 7 concludes in a hospital room with stu. he's not sick and the scientists and doctors want to keep testing him to find out why. however, stu is fed up with being kept in the dark and refuses to cooperate any more. he recalls being taken into custody and the ride down to atlanta with several of his fellow citizens, all of whom appeared in some way or another to be sick, from a case of the sniffles all the way to a bad case of fever and fainting (norm bruett). oh and mix in a little bit of hysteria on the part of lila and it was a plane ride made in heaven! stu remembers the ride to the airport and remembers seeing soldiers cordoning off the entire town with barbed wire. so the town's in quarantine but it hasnt made it on the news yet. stu knows this because he has a tv in his hospital room. he's definitely getting scared but he's keeping his poker face on. let them see your weakness and your fear and they'll never give you any answers, that's stu's thoughts.
by now the story is starting to get good, it's digging it's claws into my brain and doesnt want to let go. will stu get sick? if not, why?? he's locked up in a steel hospital room while the world is dying. surely nothing good can come of this. **bites fingernails** oh, and on the ride to the airport from arnette, stu noticed that one of the soldiers became sick. it's implied that he wasnt sick before the ride. so in the short period of time that the solider was exposed to the sick texaco crew, he developed a sneeze. holy cow, it's incubating faster now! ooh this cannot be good!!
chapter 8: the captain trips chain letter. it basically outlines how project blue, captain trips, the virus in question, made it from one state patrolman (joe bob, bill hapscomb's cousin/messenger man) to a speeding driver, to a diner full of people in east texas. all those folks carried it away to their families, friends, coworkers, and any strangers they passed along the way. we see the virus splinter and go its many ways, like a firework exploding in the night sky; too many sparks to count, going too many ways to follow at once, or to even comprehend. ripples on the surface of the water....starts out tiny and grows and grows until it's not even discernible.
chapters 9 and 10 tomorrow. they're getting longer so i think we're probably gonna have to stick to 2 a day, otherwise this is going to become more like a chore than a project of fun. thanks for reading, and comment if you want!
chapter six puts us back with frannie goldsmith. remember her? she's the "little bit preggers" chick from chapter 2. frannie is 21 and in college in new hampshire but she's back in ogunquit, maine with her parents for the summer. right now, she comes home to find her father gardening and her mother gone shopping. i get the impression that her parents are well-to-do; her mother is in portland shopping for white gloves for a wedding. now i grew up poor and i never went out of town to shop for gloves, lol, so this is mainly what gives me the impression that they are indeed well-off financially. fran goes to see her father and tell him about the baby but before she does we learn a bit about carla, frannie's mother. she's an old-fashioned woman who finds it hard to believe that frannie's not at college husband-hunting. she also has a sharp tongue and apparently having that unleashed on you would be a bad idea. i think frannie is afraid of telling her mother about the baby but she's more afraid of telling her father, because his disapproval would be more devastating. she's probably had a lot of disapproval from mom over the years but dad is the one who's always "had her back." i can relate to frannie because i've got people in my life who i dont want to let down and then there's people i love who i know i cannot please no matter what i do and anything i do will always be a bit of a disappointment. peter goldsmith has learned over the years to bite his tongue and i guess frannie has learned to do the same thing. so frannie tells her dad she's pregnant and jess (babydaddy) has offered to marry her or pay for an abortion, whichever frannie chooses to do. peter assures her he's not disappointed in her and he doesnt blame her but her mom will have a lot to say about blame.
all in all we learn more about frannie and her personality. she gets the giggles too much and apparently her mom used to too. frannie finds it hard to believe her mom ever giggled or drank beer or ever had a good time. peter explains that the death of fred, frannie's older brother, changed carla and she basically shut off when he died. fred was her favorite and frannie is peter's. frannie decides an abortion wouldn't be cool and that she wants to keep the baby. frannie is still a young woman and the world has been good to her, for the most part. but frannie's about to fall on hard times and the fate of her and the baby are hanging in the balance. ooh the plot thickens!!
let's travel down the eastern shoreline to georgia for chapter 7. remember vic palfrey? he was keeping bill hapscomb company at the texaco when the state patrolman came to give them the heads-up about the pathologists. well, vic is in a hospital bed somewhere in atlanta but not just a regular hospital, mind you; this one has steel doors and doctors in spacesuits. so we know vic is very sick and he's being treated and observed by an arsenal doctors and scientists but vic is delirious and his "magic hour" is over. the whole texaco crew and their families are in atlanta, including norm "jerk" bruett, lila, and the kids.
woowee i loves me some stu redman, he's my fav character in the whole story. not to mention the fact that every time i read it now i see gary sinise, who played stu in the movie version. and i loves me some gary sinise. lol. anyway, back to the story....chapter 7 concludes in a hospital room with stu. he's not sick and the scientists and doctors want to keep testing him to find out why. however, stu is fed up with being kept in the dark and refuses to cooperate any more. he recalls being taken into custody and the ride down to atlanta with several of his fellow citizens, all of whom appeared in some way or another to be sick, from a case of the sniffles all the way to a bad case of fever and fainting (norm bruett). oh and mix in a little bit of hysteria on the part of lila and it was a plane ride made in heaven! stu remembers the ride to the airport and remembers seeing soldiers cordoning off the entire town with barbed wire. so the town's in quarantine but it hasnt made it on the news yet. stu knows this because he has a tv in his hospital room. he's definitely getting scared but he's keeping his poker face on. let them see your weakness and your fear and they'll never give you any answers, that's stu's thoughts.
by now the story is starting to get good, it's digging it's claws into my brain and doesnt want to let go. will stu get sick? if not, why?? he's locked up in a steel hospital room while the world is dying. surely nothing good can come of this. **bites fingernails** oh, and on the ride to the airport from arnette, stu noticed that one of the soldiers became sick. it's implied that he wasnt sick before the ride. so in the short period of time that the solider was exposed to the sick texaco crew, he developed a sneeze. holy cow, it's incubating faster now! ooh this cannot be good!!
chapter 8: the captain trips chain letter. it basically outlines how project blue, captain trips, the virus in question, made it from one state patrolman (joe bob, bill hapscomb's cousin/messenger man) to a speeding driver, to a diner full of people in east texas. all those folks carried it away to their families, friends, coworkers, and any strangers they passed along the way. we see the virus splinter and go its many ways, like a firework exploding in the night sky; too many sparks to count, going too many ways to follow at once, or to even comprehend. ripples on the surface of the water....starts out tiny and grows and grows until it's not even discernible.
chapters 9 and 10 tomorrow. they're getting longer so i think we're probably gonna have to stick to 2 a day, otherwise this is going to become more like a chore than a project of fun. thanks for reading, and comment if you want!
wednesday afternoon, august 10, 2011
well i stayed up way too late last night (gasp! shocker! NOT!!) so i slept most of the day away. i have always loved to sleep during the day and do what i need to do at night. i've been like that ever since i was a child and no matter how hard or how many times i try to change it, i just cant seem to break out of it. i've been called lazy and sorry and several other names i'd rather not put into print, but the simple fact is this: after 30+ years of doing this, i think this is just the way it's going to be. everyone's entitled to his or her own opinion and i respect you in that aspect but this is just me.
i'm looking forward to the end of summer; hopefully around the end of august when it starts to cool off i'm going to start walking, i've made up my mind and nothing is going to change it. jackie is going to walk with me, and nothing is going to change that either, right, jackie? jackie?? now where'd she run off to...?........
on another subject, amberly is trying to sell her guitar and amp, but all she keeps getting are scam artists. they keep wanting to send her checks and money orders for large amounts of money that she can cash, keep her share plus more, then send them the remainder. now i've been online long enough to know that this is a scam but she's only 16 and she doesn't understand. she thinks i'm just being stubborn about her selling the guitar. i think she knows deep down inside that it is a scam but she's disappointed and doesnt want it to be true. i feel bad for her and i wish i could get my hands on the sorry S.O.B. who is trying to scam her. i'd make her eat every one of her emails! (and since emails are on the computer, that means a big ole side dish of hardware, ya sorry bastid!!)
lastly, i'd like to impart the fact that i passed both of my summer classes with flying colors. the quarter ended yesterday and i have a 4.0 GPA. i'm not bragging, i'm just.....well, yeah i am bragging. i'm proud of myself. i showed up for class every day except once and i was never late. that's the biggest thing i'm proud of, because i'm always late! ask anyone who knows me well. ask my boss!! hell, ask my ex, i was late twice too many and we ended up with two children, LOL.
well it's almost suppertime so i better mosey to the kitchen and see what i can rustle up for my crew. thank you for taking time to read along with me, and i hope to see you later on when i blog about chapters 5-7 of the stand.
~t
i'm looking forward to the end of summer; hopefully around the end of august when it starts to cool off i'm going to start walking, i've made up my mind and nothing is going to change it. jackie is going to walk with me, and nothing is going to change that either, right, jackie? jackie?? now where'd she run off to...?........
on another subject, amberly is trying to sell her guitar and amp, but all she keeps getting are scam artists. they keep wanting to send her checks and money orders for large amounts of money that she can cash, keep her share plus more, then send them the remainder. now i've been online long enough to know that this is a scam but she's only 16 and she doesn't understand. she thinks i'm just being stubborn about her selling the guitar. i think she knows deep down inside that it is a scam but she's disappointed and doesnt want it to be true. i feel bad for her and i wish i could get my hands on the sorry S.O.B. who is trying to scam her. i'd make her eat every one of her emails! (and since emails are on the computer, that means a big ole side dish of hardware, ya sorry bastid!!)
lastly, i'd like to impart the fact that i passed both of my summer classes with flying colors. the quarter ended yesterday and i have a 4.0 GPA. i'm not bragging, i'm just.....well, yeah i am bragging. i'm proud of myself. i showed up for class every day except once and i was never late. that's the biggest thing i'm proud of, because i'm always late! ask anyone who knows me well. ask my boss!! hell, ask my ex, i was late twice too many and we ended up with two children, LOL.
well it's almost suppertime so i better mosey to the kitchen and see what i can rustle up for my crew. thank you for taking time to read along with me, and i hope to see you later on when i blog about chapters 5-7 of the stand.
~t
the stand: chapters 3-5
jackie and i decided to try to blog four chapters but chapter 5 was pretty long so we're going to start on 6 tomorrow.
the first part of chapter 3 opens with norm bruett, a man we met at bill hapscomb's texaco back in chapter 1. norm is at home now, and we learn he has a wife and two children. wife lila is away babysitting for a "dolar" and has left a "sassage" for his "luntch." norm is sad when he sees his two young boys playing outside in hand-me-downs and simultaneously angry with a desire to beat them. times are tough for the bruett family, and now norm has a cold.
there's nothing like some financial hardships to bring out the beast in some people, but overall, norm is a class-a scumbag, in my opinion. his and his family's characters are stereotypical but unfortunately pretty spot-on. it's implied that his wife is uneducated and he's abusive. their family has fallen on hard times; he is laid off from the calculator factory (we learned that in chapter 1 also), and now, norm is sick: headache, body aches, and sneezing.
we're back at bill hapscomb's texaco for the second part of chapter 3. bill is working on a car and his pal vic is keeping him company. bill's cousin, a state patrolman, comes by to gas up and impart some serious information: some houston pathologists and some people from the plague center in atlanta are coming to inspect the bodies of charlie campion and his family. bill and vic are both showing early signs of a cold.
we can see a sickness beginning in this small town. we also have to remember that the old guys at the texaco aren't the first people that charlie campion and his family came in contact with; after all, they did make it all the way from california to this small town of arnette, texas.
the chapter ends with lila bruett, norm's wife, babysitting the hodges kids. she's watching a soap opera and lamenting over how nice sally hodges' house is with a color tv and paint-by-number pictures of Jesus. lila has a cough and a tickle in her throat, and the youngest hodges baby is sick too.
now the sickness is spreading fast. lila and norm were only in each other's company for presumably half a day after he was exposed to campion at the texaco. lila has been with the hodges children for less time than that and already the baby is sick. true, the baby could have been exposed in some other way but we dont know and we're left to assume that her exposure came from lila.
i've had some training in healthcare and i understand about airborne pathogens, and this scenario is scary. most viruses incubate for several days or even weeks before symptoms start to emerge. this illness is spreading and showing in less than 24 hours. very very scary.
project blue. that's what the marines are calling the sickness. the marines are at the base where it originated, the same base that charlie campion ran from. there are many dead people on the base in the labs and in the cafeteria, even a guy who died and fell face first into his bowl of soup. the virus has an ivory soap communicability rate, 99.4% with an equal mortality rate. the town of arnette, texas is under quarantine, and the crew from the texaco station all show signs of sickness except for stu. the news around town is an anthrax outbreak.
this chapter kinda depressed me. starkey, a marine bigwig who is at the base, is the main character of this chapter and he has to deal with the reality that this virus is now out in the open and he is scared. i am sad for starkey and scared with him. i sympathize with him when he imagines having to tell his daughter that her husband (his coworker or maybe subordinate) is dead. (not from the virus though; he committed suicide in the face of the impending disaster.) this chapter also has one scene it that has stuck with me since the first time i read it: the dead guy with his face in the bowl of soup. this scene has popped into my head at various random times throughout my life. the stark reality is you never know when and where your day is gonna come so always wear clean underwear and always pack a great lunch. stay away from the soup though....i hear it's killer.
chapter 5: larry underwood, up and coming pop music star, goes back home to new york city to visit his mother. life in los angeles has been good to larry lately; he cut an album and made it to the billboard music chart, even made it so far as to be featured on kasey kasem's top 40. but things got out of control: parties, drugs, a leeching girlfriend. a fellow musician takes larry aside and forces larry to see what's really going on. larry leaves los angeles and heads back to his mom's apartment in new york for a vacation. larry's mom is a tough woman who had to raise her son alone after his father died. larry left home with a less than heartwarming goodbye, and his homecoming is about the same. she doesnt approve of larry's style of music and she doesnt mind letting him know. on the day larry unexpectedly arrives, she has called in sick to work but, upon his arrival,decides to go to work anyway.
larry was one of my least favorite main characters the first time i read the book. he's careless and selfish and naive and just overall a jerk. but when times got tough, larry knew where to turn: home, the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. i sort of feel sorry for larry once he's home; guilt trips are no fun even if you are in the wrong. all in all, chapter 5 was a "get to know ya" chapter for larry. i think what happened to him in los angeles shook him a bit, but i agree with his mother that it's going to take something major in his life to make larry wake up and smell the coffee.
the first part of chapter 3 opens with norm bruett, a man we met at bill hapscomb's texaco back in chapter 1. norm is at home now, and we learn he has a wife and two children. wife lila is away babysitting for a "dolar" and has left a "sassage" for his "luntch." norm is sad when he sees his two young boys playing outside in hand-me-downs and simultaneously angry with a desire to beat them. times are tough for the bruett family, and now norm has a cold.
there's nothing like some financial hardships to bring out the beast in some people, but overall, norm is a class-a scumbag, in my opinion. his and his family's characters are stereotypical but unfortunately pretty spot-on. it's implied that his wife is uneducated and he's abusive. their family has fallen on hard times; he is laid off from the calculator factory (we learned that in chapter 1 also), and now, norm is sick: headache, body aches, and sneezing.
we're back at bill hapscomb's texaco for the second part of chapter 3. bill is working on a car and his pal vic is keeping him company. bill's cousin, a state patrolman, comes by to gas up and impart some serious information: some houston pathologists and some people from the plague center in atlanta are coming to inspect the bodies of charlie campion and his family. bill and vic are both showing early signs of a cold.
we can see a sickness beginning in this small town. we also have to remember that the old guys at the texaco aren't the first people that charlie campion and his family came in contact with; after all, they did make it all the way from california to this small town of arnette, texas.
the chapter ends with lila bruett, norm's wife, babysitting the hodges kids. she's watching a soap opera and lamenting over how nice sally hodges' house is with a color tv and paint-by-number pictures of Jesus. lila has a cough and a tickle in her throat, and the youngest hodges baby is sick too.
now the sickness is spreading fast. lila and norm were only in each other's company for presumably half a day after he was exposed to campion at the texaco. lila has been with the hodges children for less time than that and already the baby is sick. true, the baby could have been exposed in some other way but we dont know and we're left to assume that her exposure came from lila.
i've had some training in healthcare and i understand about airborne pathogens, and this scenario is scary. most viruses incubate for several days or even weeks before symptoms start to emerge. this illness is spreading and showing in less than 24 hours. very very scary.
project blue. that's what the marines are calling the sickness. the marines are at the base where it originated, the same base that charlie campion ran from. there are many dead people on the base in the labs and in the cafeteria, even a guy who died and fell face first into his bowl of soup. the virus has an ivory soap communicability rate, 99.4% with an equal mortality rate. the town of arnette, texas is under quarantine, and the crew from the texaco station all show signs of sickness except for stu. the news around town is an anthrax outbreak.
this chapter kinda depressed me. starkey, a marine bigwig who is at the base, is the main character of this chapter and he has to deal with the reality that this virus is now out in the open and he is scared. i am sad for starkey and scared with him. i sympathize with him when he imagines having to tell his daughter that her husband (his coworker or maybe subordinate) is dead. (not from the virus though; he committed suicide in the face of the impending disaster.) this chapter also has one scene it that has stuck with me since the first time i read it: the dead guy with his face in the bowl of soup. this scene has popped into my head at various random times throughout my life. the stark reality is you never know when and where your day is gonna come so always wear clean underwear and always pack a great lunch. stay away from the soup though....i hear it's killer.
chapter 5: larry underwood, up and coming pop music star, goes back home to new york city to visit his mother. life in los angeles has been good to larry lately; he cut an album and made it to the billboard music chart, even made it so far as to be featured on kasey kasem's top 40. but things got out of control: parties, drugs, a leeching girlfriend. a fellow musician takes larry aside and forces larry to see what's really going on. larry leaves los angeles and heads back to his mom's apartment in new york for a vacation. larry's mom is a tough woman who had to raise her son alone after his father died. larry left home with a less than heartwarming goodbye, and his homecoming is about the same. she doesnt approve of larry's style of music and she doesnt mind letting him know. on the day larry unexpectedly arrives, she has called in sick to work but, upon his arrival,decides to go to work anyway.
larry was one of my least favorite main characters the first time i read the book. he's careless and selfish and naive and just overall a jerk. but when times got tough, larry knew where to turn: home, the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. i sort of feel sorry for larry once he's home; guilt trips are no fun even if you are in the wrong. all in all, chapter 5 was a "get to know ya" chapter for larry. i think what happened to him in los angeles shook him a bit, but i agree with his mother that it's going to take something major in his life to make larry wake up and smell the coffee.
the dead cat in the garbage can and the rat gnawing on the cat seem to be foreshadowing symbolism to me. good vs evil with a major case of role reversal; mankind, virtually dead in a wasteland, is being preyed upon by the evil that lurks in the shadows, an evil that just needs some bright headlights to send it back to its hiding place.
thank you for reading along so far. please feel free to comment if you wish.
the stand: the circle opens, captain trips, chapters 1 and 2
MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS, DONT READ IF U DONT WANNA KNOW WHAT HAPPENS!
the beginning of the book finds us on a military base where our first character, a soldier named charlie, is waking his wife from a dead sleep. he's in a panic and he's prompting her to get dressed, dress the baby, and let's get the hell outta dodge. the warning light went off in the tower when charlie was on watch and all the other soldiers are dead; he managed to escape before the tower sealed off and he's come home to rescue his family. they throw together some clothes, grab some money they had hidden away, and haul buggy off the military base.
in the previous few sentences i've basically summed up the opening of the book. however, king said it well in his preface to the stand that an entire story can be told in just a few sentences but it's all the extra stuff that makes it good. i mean, admit it, my short summary is pretty crappy. but his approximately 7 page beginning, he starts to weave a tale that just grabs your attention and holds it tight. and if you're anything like me (as a reader) then it wont let go until long after the book is finished. *sigh* i'm already dreading the end of the book and i'm only on chapter 3!
chapter one transports us to a small texas town where several old men are in the local texaco, hem-hawing over the poor economy in said town. we meet a slew of characters, from the owner of the station to out-of-work factory employees. one attendee of this local yokel meeting is stu, who will eventually become one of our main characters. he's the youngest of the bunch of old philosophers. he's pretty quiet, in general, having grown up on hard times and then losing his new wife to cancer, the same cancer, we learn, that killed his mother years earlier. while he listens to the old guys chewing the proverbial fat, he witnesses in the distance a vehicle traveling erratically toward the station. the car comes to a crashing halt at the station and charlie, our character from chapter one, falls out of the car when the door is opened. charlie is very sick from what appears to be food poisoning or perhaps cholera, or so muses one of the onlookers from the station. his wife and child are inside the car, dead from apparently the same thing.
king paints a portrait of life in any small american town. the old men gathered together to talk politics or the economy, or maybe both. if you've read much of king's work, you know he has a knack for grasping the small things that draw you in on such a base level that you cant help but identify in some way with whatever he's writing about. no, i've never been chased by a rabid saint bernard, and i've never owned a possessed car (i had one repossessed once, but that's a whole other can of worms!), and i've certainly never been trapped at the school dance when a teen telekinetic is pushed past the breaking point , but it sure felt like i could have been at any or all of them. they all seemed real and all happened in places where i very well could have been. i could identify with so many nuances of those stories, just as i can with this one. no, i'm not an old man but i see them in action on a regular basis with my work, and i grew up around older men (uncles, grandfather, etc) and i've heard the same things said in so many different ways.
enter our next character, frannie. she will later become a main character, but for now she's a 22 year old local girl who's just "a little bit preggers." she's meeting her boyfriend/babydaddy on the beach, the same beach where the babybump was made. watching him from afar, she realizes she is not in love with the guy anymore, and when she tells him she's pregnant, he seems lost. they go to have ice cream, they quarrel, they kinda break up. their future is a bit uncertain at the moment. chapter 2 in a nutshell.
having read the stand several times, i guess i may be biased when i write my summaries. if i were reading it for the first time, i'd probably include a lot more details. it's also hard not to include events that i know are going to happen. chapter two is kind of bland. i see frannie painted as a sort of a bitch, but i know that she's not. hormones? disappointment? resentment? probably all of the above and more.
i look forward to chapters 3 and 4. it's kind of fun to analyze them also. i havent done this kind of thing before (well i probably did in literature class in high school but that was many many moons ago and mandatory, this is voluntary and much more fun!) so i guess it might get interesting later on as the story progresses. i hope, if you're reading, that i'm not spoiling anything for you. even if you've not read the book and you come across this blog, i hold no candle whatsover to the awesome mr king and you would do so much better to read his version. in addition to mine, of course ;)
until tomorrow, friends....
the beginning of the book finds us on a military base where our first character, a soldier named charlie, is waking his wife from a dead sleep. he's in a panic and he's prompting her to get dressed, dress the baby, and let's get the hell outta dodge. the warning light went off in the tower when charlie was on watch and all the other soldiers are dead; he managed to escape before the tower sealed off and he's come home to rescue his family. they throw together some clothes, grab some money they had hidden away, and haul buggy off the military base.
in the previous few sentences i've basically summed up the opening of the book. however, king said it well in his preface to the stand that an entire story can be told in just a few sentences but it's all the extra stuff that makes it good. i mean, admit it, my short summary is pretty crappy. but his approximately 7 page beginning, he starts to weave a tale that just grabs your attention and holds it tight. and if you're anything like me (as a reader) then it wont let go until long after the book is finished. *sigh* i'm already dreading the end of the book and i'm only on chapter 3!
chapter one transports us to a small texas town where several old men are in the local texaco, hem-hawing over the poor economy in said town. we meet a slew of characters, from the owner of the station to out-of-work factory employees. one attendee of this local yokel meeting is stu, who will eventually become one of our main characters. he's the youngest of the bunch of old philosophers. he's pretty quiet, in general, having grown up on hard times and then losing his new wife to cancer, the same cancer, we learn, that killed his mother years earlier. while he listens to the old guys chewing the proverbial fat, he witnesses in the distance a vehicle traveling erratically toward the station. the car comes to a crashing halt at the station and charlie, our character from chapter one, falls out of the car when the door is opened. charlie is very sick from what appears to be food poisoning or perhaps cholera, or so muses one of the onlookers from the station. his wife and child are inside the car, dead from apparently the same thing.
king paints a portrait of life in any small american town. the old men gathered together to talk politics or the economy, or maybe both. if you've read much of king's work, you know he has a knack for grasping the small things that draw you in on such a base level that you cant help but identify in some way with whatever he's writing about. no, i've never been chased by a rabid saint bernard, and i've never owned a possessed car (i had one repossessed once, but that's a whole other can of worms!), and i've certainly never been trapped at the school dance when a teen telekinetic is pushed past the breaking point , but it sure felt like i could have been at any or all of them. they all seemed real and all happened in places where i very well could have been. i could identify with so many nuances of those stories, just as i can with this one. no, i'm not an old man but i see them in action on a regular basis with my work, and i grew up around older men (uncles, grandfather, etc) and i've heard the same things said in so many different ways.
enter our next character, frannie. she will later become a main character, but for now she's a 22 year old local girl who's just "a little bit preggers." she's meeting her boyfriend/babydaddy on the beach, the same beach where the babybump was made. watching him from afar, she realizes she is not in love with the guy anymore, and when she tells him she's pregnant, he seems lost. they go to have ice cream, they quarrel, they kinda break up. their future is a bit uncertain at the moment. chapter 2 in a nutshell.
having read the stand several times, i guess i may be biased when i write my summaries. if i were reading it for the first time, i'd probably include a lot more details. it's also hard not to include events that i know are going to happen. chapter two is kind of bland. i see frannie painted as a sort of a bitch, but i know that she's not. hormones? disappointment? resentment? probably all of the above and more.
i look forward to chapters 3 and 4. it's kind of fun to analyze them also. i havent done this kind of thing before (well i probably did in literature class in high school but that was many many moons ago and mandatory, this is voluntary and much more fun!) so i guess it might get interesting later on as the story progresses. i hope, if you're reading, that i'm not spoiling anything for you. even if you've not read the book and you come across this blog, i hold no candle whatsover to the awesome mr king and you would do so much better to read his version. in addition to mine, of course ;)
until tomorrow, friends....
my love of books
my mother read to me all the time when i was a child, even before i can remember. some of my earliest memories were of mama and i curled up on the couch at our old house, she lying on her side with her knees crooked out toward the edge of the couch, and me lying behind her legs with my head propped on her hip. she would read from one of four large, hardback richard scarry books. for those of you who dont know, richard scarry books were compilations of childhood nursery rhymes, short stories, etc. sometimes she would read the stories to me or i would just look at the pictures. when i was old enough i would read the same books myself. that was my fun time. i even read when i was potty training! there i was, sitting on the white plastic potty, big-girl panties in a heap on the floor, reading from a book. good times, good times!
as i got older, i used reading as an escape of sorts. we lived in the country and all of my cousins who were anywhere close to my age lived in other towns. there were few children in the area, and the ones that were around didnt play with me, for whatever reason. (i think it was a social clash, their parents didnt want them playing with the poor white trash girl.) so books became my escape, their characters became my friends. i would pretend i was whatever heroine was at hand and i would live her story.
i even read nonfiction works; the encyclopedia was a smorgasbord of information. i would read about the presidents and then write summaries of what i had read. i would make little booklets with all the presidents in them and later i would use them to "teach" my playschool classes!
as i got a little older, i would read magazines and magazine-type books; ellery queen, reader's digest, tv guide, the enquirer, MAD, anything i could get my hands on. my aunt betty was a fanatic for the romantic true story magazines, so i even read those, and she later introduced me to historical romance fiction and harlequin books. i loved those and simply couldn't get enough.
during the summer and every other chance i got, i practically lived at the evans county library. i cherished walking up the sidewalk to the huge brick building with its smoky glass windows. entering the atrium brought such joy to my heart; the library had a smell all of its own: books, air freshener, a hint of cleaning supplies. the conditioned air from the book haven would hit me as i opened the second door that led from the atrium into the main lobby and i would always have a smile inside my heart. occasionally that smile would make it to my face.
i would scour the shelves of the library; there were no computers back then in our small, rural library. soon the junior section of the library became boring, and i graduated to the adult book section when i was about 11 or 12. i read every book i could get my hands on, from anatomy & physiology to do-it-yourself to non-fiction. i was a sponge. then, i found stephen king.
the first book i read by king was christine, and i was hooked. i read and re-read nearly every king book i could get my hands on, and my love for reading horror was born. i already had a love for watching horror movies since i was a small child, and this just perpetuated the cycle! while i love almost all aspects of horror, my heart lies in the paranormal. ghost, goblins, vampires, werewolves, monsters, they hold my interest more than anything, in both books and movies.
all this leads up to one thing: the stand, an epic apocalyptic novel by stephen king. jackie and i are going to read the book together according to a set reading pattern and blog on it daily. by our calculations, it should take approximately 39 days to finish. i read my allotted two chapters and it was very hard to put down! i've read the story three or four times already and it just keeps getting better.
i <3 stephen king!!
morning, august 08, 2011
Matthew 7:6 says "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you."
"that's how i was raised" is such a cop-out. i was raised that way too but i dont practice that nor do i feel that way in my heart. i love everyone but i dont like everyone, but you can be sure that if i dont like you it's because of something i personally experienced with you, not some preconceived idea i have about you because of your skin color, religion, sexual preference, or whatever.
i'd be a virtual hermit if i shunned everyone based on their prejudices, but i dont always keep quiet. i will tell my opinion and beliefs and i never lie or go along with what someone is saying just because i dont want to be ridiculed. i am a firm believer in standing up for what i think is right no matter who is opposing it. this time, though, i felt it was futile and i know for a fact that not everyone in the group has the same hateful opinions that i was hearing. besides, i was in someone else's home and i was not at liberty to leave at a moment's notice if things got less than pleasant, for i was riding with someone else. so while i do stand up for my beliefs, i also recognize a situation when i need to keep my mouth shut. the time will come for me to say what i need to say.
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