To TexasWren

Happy, Happy Birthday!

Have a wonderful, wonderful day!

Oh, enigmacat, get home safely!

The evening news is all about the disasterous conditions in the subways going (or not going) to your neighborhood. I hope you can stay cool, calm and caffineated and get home safely tonight. 

Straphangers Warned Of Long, Hot Evening Commute In Queens

A question for my geeky pals

Do you use del.icio.us? If so, what do you think of it?

(no subject)

From E-F (picked up from atenea_nike)
:
I'm in the mood for an experiment in creative writing. I'm hoping some of my LJ friends will join me. I'm posting here a little something I just wrote, intending it to be part of a short story. I'd like any of you who wishes to contribute the next paragraph to play along in the following fashion:


1) Post a reply here (quick like a bunny, so nobody beats you to it) to claim your spot as next in line.
2) Copy the story so far, add a paragraph of your own, and post the whole thing to your own journal, INCLUDING THESE INSTRUCTIONS. (Preferably, post the evolving story behind a cut, as this could get long if it works out.)
3) You may add as many paragraphs as you want, but only after at least one other writer has added one after your last one.
4) If you think the story is done, write THE END at the end, so that all readers see the game is over. (If anyone says it's done, it's done!)
5) If you'd like to play along, but someone has already claimed the next place, keep your eye on his or her journal in order to snag your own place in the queue.
6) Please make your entry public (unless you have a good reason to lock it, of course), as locking it to friends only means some of us writers won't be able to see what's become of our story.
7) Have fun.


Listen. I'm an old woman by anyone's standards. 94 years old, to be exact, and there's a limit to how long I've got left to make this right. It's been a month now since Vera died (may she rest in peace finally, the poor dear). She was the last one who could have been hurt by the telling of this sordid little tale, not to mention the last who could call me on our girlhood pact to take the secret to our graves. Well the other four--Vera, Josie, Mary, and Alice--all made good on that pact. That just goes to show what I've said all along: they all had firmer morals than me, and I was lucky to run with that crowd, in spite of the one little incident that none of us could ever forget.

It's funny how the years between then and now have blurred, but this memory is as sharp as if it happened yesterday. I still remember the sticky summer air, scented with honeysuckle, and the light breeze that did nothing to cool us off. I remember the damp tendrils of Mary's hair, normally impeccable in it's top knot, sticking to her face and her impatiently brushing it aside. Mary, who seldom let anything ruffle her composure.

It was 1930, and what we later called the Great Depression was only a few months old. My Poppa was struggling to keep his drug store going, and honestly, I think he gave away almost as much medicine as he sold. He used to say that these people were his friends, and as long as he drew breath, he would not see his friends suffer. He was always good that way, and later, the five of us were thankful for the respect and love our town had for him. In the end, it's what saved the day for us and allowed us to live the lives we did.

We were...well, let's see, I would have been about 17. Mary was a little older, the others a bit younger. We ran together, though, since school days. Joined at the hip, they said. Mostly from trying to keep away from our brothers who would pester us and the Yocum boys who would do worse. It was never quite clear what the "worse" was that the Yocums would do, leastways not at first, but we knew to stay clear of them. Deep-down in your gut knew to stay away without being told. There were lots of them, all ages, but all seeming to be the same hulking, stooped size. Their daddy was mean; their mama was dead; the younger ones had a different mama and folks said she'd be dead before long too. One of them, it was Jed Yocum was married to a girl we'd known in school. She'd been a pretty girl and it was never clear that they'd courted much, but one day they were married. Soon, she was having a baby -- another Yocum boy -- and beginning to look as drawn and pinched as the new mama and the old mama before her.

The depression years passed, the dust storms came, and like many of the folks around here, the Yocums headed out west. Things changed a lot in our town during those years. I was helping Poppa in the store, my dreams of college put on hold. Mary's grandfather died and left her a bit of money. Her mom insisted that she use it for school, so she was going down to Austin in the fall to study music. Vera and Alice were trying to find jobs, but with so many men out of work, there wasn't much available for young ladies. Poppa really didn't have much for me to do, so we had a lot of time on our hands that summer. That was our first mistake.

We were so reckless, so carefree, so young and wild. We wanted to drink from life's cup to the dregs. So hopelessly naïve. I look back on us and I feel a pang of mixed love and sorrow for everything we were, for the energy and the hopes that were yet to be dulled by repeated crushes against real life.

Mary, my sweet Mary, Virgin Mary we used to call her when we wanted to provoke her. She truly had something of the beauty of early italian Madonnas, and her fixed composure and calm had an eerie quality about them. We would come to be grateful, oh so grateful, for those traits we teased her mercilessly about. Josie was a tomboy, always tumbling around in overalls, looking slightly dishevelled the minute she set her feet out of her door. Her cornflower blue eyes always sparkled with mischief and suppressed laughter. By that summer her mother had begun to force her to look more feminine, more "becoming", as her Mom used to say, and sometimes she would come to us in a calico dress that looked as out of place on her slender frame as her overalls would have looked on any of us. In those occassions her inner fire seemed dampened by the awkward clothes, and a sort of mute desperation would cloud her bright eyes.

Tiny Vera, delicate and fine-boned, was the quiet, ladylike daughter Josie's mother wished she'd had. A bout with infantile paralysis had left Vera with a tendency to tire easily, an almost-unnoticeable limp and the burden of a hovering, over-protective mother. Our lovely Vera always thought herself plain, but her fair complexion and thick, wavy hair gave her the ethereal appearance of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Sadly, at that age, the boys in our town were drawn to a showier, more voluptuous type of girl. We all thought we knew each other's innermost thoughts, fears and desires, but none of us realized how much little Vera longed for a fellow to notice her. She never whispered a word about it, and it wasn't until later that we learned how she'd silently dreamed of a mysterious stranger, someone who would flirt and sneak kisses, a beau who'd proudly walk beside her on Main Street, holding her hand. If only we'd known how desperate she was for a sweetheart.