Oliver Anthony

By now most people have heard of Oliver Anthony (see his info on Facebook). It's amusing to see people saying it's a song that is "dividing America." Hardly. I believe it has struck a chord, so to speak, with people of all persuasions--it was #1 on iTunes which is hardly made up of conservatives. It was streamed on Spotify over 11 million times in the first week. Finally, someone making real music that means something!

A few years ago I wrote that today's musicians were failing us by not putting out protest songs of the day and we've seen Jason Aldean and Anthony Oliver step up. People want to parse their words into something not meant in order to divide--those people are causing any divisions among Americans and with the success of each of their songs, I think people are starting to see who really is causing division. United we stand, divided we fall, and there are those out there who want to see America fall.

Been a while since I posted on this blog--life marches merrily along and time flies. I've pretty much forgotten about it. So what's been going on? I'll turn 66-years-old tomorrow, on Dorothy Parker's birthday. Love that I share a birthday with such a wit! I just wish her life had been happier. Thursday marks 9 years since Charlie was diagnosed with melanoma in the brain. And then a few months later, in the lung. We opted for 2 surgical procedures (1 brain, 1 lung) and no chemo. I've had him on alternatives instead and he's doing well. He did have a second brain surgery a few years ago and the doctors think a cyst formed due to the first surgery. He recovered well from that surgery, and there was no return of the cancer. 

I was bitten by a tick in June 2021 and got super sick. I was in the ER up to 3 times a week at one point. Doctors said I was fine. Stated "You do not have Lyme." I had Lyme and several co-infections. I was failing neurologically and had heart issues (did not take the Covid jabs!). My blood pressure has been normal all of my life, sometimes a bit low. But it shot up to 192/107 and they just wanted to put me on meds instead of finding out what was going on. After $10,000 in medical bills (I was 64 and not on Medicare yet!) and no help from the doctors, I fired them. I was able to get over it myself. I joined a Lyme group, did massive research, and started experimenting with herbal supplements. Learning how Lyme affects the body was key in understanding how to attack it. Within 3 days of the program I designed for myself, I was feeling better. I woke up smiling on the third day! I was actually beginning to sleep, as insomnia and vertigo were constant. It took the better part of a year to get back to what I consider 100% but I got there and it feels so good to feel so good! I told Charlie the other day that I might be almost 66 but in my head I feel like I did in my 30's. I have tons of energy, which is a good thing as we've had tons of projects to catch up on since his last brain surgery and recovery, then my appendectomy, and then the Lyme disease. We've literally taken each room apart, decluttered, got rid of shit, and repaired, painted, etc. Almost done, just have the office and my sewing room to do. We're having company for a week at the end of September so it's good incentive to push on and get it done. We've moved the furniture around, added new pieces, etc. Almost like an entirely new house. 

Matthew is doing well; it's a good thing we got him into his house 7.5 years ago, it would be almost impossible today. A lot of stuff that we don't need anymore is going to him, and he has a fiancé. She's having a good time decorating their house and making it hers, too. They're both hard workers and happy. No wedding date yet but sometime in 2024 is the estimate. There's no hurry. He turned 32 in July and a lot of his friends are already struggling with too many kids and divorces. I am glad he waited until he found someone like her instead of just rushing into a relationship because everyone else was. He's worked on his career, which has changed a few times and he now works for the City of Richmond pulling down more than Charlie made at that age! He's also been working on his education. He got his associates degree and is working on the Bachelor's degree, while also taking classes in his career pursuit and getting those certifications, including state certifications. He's been a go-getter for sure. He now sees why we told him "no" when he wanted to "take a year off" after high school. We knew that would not be the right thing and he sees his high school friends who did not continue on the path to adulthood still living at home. One of his female friends lives at home with mommy and daddy, with her baby and husband. One male friend still lives at home and sometimes has his 8 year old son stay there, too. Another had 5 kids way too young and he sees her struggling to work and raise them. Matthew is able to work, work on his house, and do fun things with his fiancé without too much restraint due to putting first things first. There were times when he was a teen that I didn't think we'd get to this point!

So that's it. Now time to forget about this blog again!

Poems/prose on this site are original works, copyrighted Julie P. Clark 2023, and may not be used without permission. DISCLAIMER: Poems and commentary should not be taken to mean any person living, dead, or otherwise.

April 21, 2021

Welp, cain't say I'm surprised. More later.

Poems/prose on this site are original works, copyrighted Julie P. Clark 2021, and may not be used without permission. DISCLAIMER: Poems and commentary should not be taken to mean any person living, dead, or otherwise.

August 26, 2020

Days and months pass by and I often forget about this blog. Weird that I started it so many years ago; time really does fly!

August 24th was the sixth anniversary of Charlie being admitted to the hospital in critical condition with what would turn out to be brain cancer. He's doing well; a bit of a limp in his left leg from the first bout with melanoma, and he does get tired easily but who doesn't at age 64?! His strength isn't what it used to be either and age can be partially at fault for that. But all in all, getting to 6 years with no recurrences (as far as we know) is a big milestone. It will be 6 years in October that his lung cancer was discovered and the end of December will be 6 years since finishing 4 bouts of radiation for the lung cancer. I can't say that he has it beat as you just never know with melanoma. One thing is for sure; he would not be here if we had listened to his first oncologist!

We're still not participating in the panic porn of the pandemic. No mask, no hand sanitizer, no sterilizing everything, no washing the groceries, which we shop for ourselves. No gloves. Just the normal house cleaning and washing hands when needed.

It's funny--after making that post about taking and posting screen shots if I get any more emails that are along of the lines of "Do you know what So and So is doing?" they have stopped. No more junk from the same email addresses either. I was going through the emails on that Gmail account (that only one person, as far as I can remember, knew) from way back when looking for something else and found a couple of "odd" emails. One was a photo of a jar of boysenberry jam and a small folding fan. The person (who did not use an identifying name) asked if I could guess what the photo meant because "I know you were so good at these things." I did not respond but my guess would be "fan boys." I won't out the email here with the address and Internet IP because it was before I said I would out them publicly. Fair is fair. I'm just glad the emails have stopped because I truly don't care.

I used to get emails asking me when I would post about my take on the 2020 election. Those stopped, too. Anyone who wants to know my thoughts only need to follow my Twitter account.

I keep seeing Dems say that the Trump administration was slow to act regarding COVID, so I wrote a rather lengthy timeline that covers about the first 3 months. I made it public so it could be shared but if anyone has me blocked, you won't see it. Ah well!

Facebook timeline of COVID

Had tons of rain and the outer bands of a tornado so the gardens were pretty wrecked for this year. The flowers are still blooming, even tho they are all bent askew; the orchard, herbs, and elderberry bushes are doing well. Veggies wrecked but I got tons of hot and bell peppers; drying the hot peppers for the winter months.

So that's about it, just tickin' right along!



Poems/prose on this site are original works, copyrighted Julie P. Clark 2020, and may not be used without permission. DISCLAIMER: Poems and commentary should not be taken to mean any person living, dead, or otherwise.

June 27, 2020

So, this is interesting. A few weeks ago a musician contacted me to do some research for him; he had had a music website years ago and he forgot all about it, and didn't renew the domain. There was a lot of content on it that he had not saved that he needed, and he was willing to pay good money to retrieve as much of it as possible. I told him about the Internet Archive but he didn't have the time or patience to mess with it, so I accepted the gig.

After a week of working on the project, for a couple of hours a day, I was able to retrieve all of his text content (the most important thing he wanted), several photos, etc. Most photos were gone but he had access to places online to retrieve those.

It was a satisfying project because if there is one thing I love, it's research and the thrill of the hunt! Plus it paid good to have fun!

"Breakaway Face" by John Rosemond and Mystery Train.
This is one of just 1000 copies pressed. It was my first
exposure to a NC band that I had never heard of before.

I started thinking about a music website I did for author John Rosemond when I was working for him. I wondered if it was still available and so I did what any good researcher would do--I went a'searchin'! And I found almost all of the text content (no photos except the one of his CD cover). And even one of the songs is playable!

Here is the song that is playable: I'd Rather You Left.

His discography is at these two links:
Discography Part One

Discography Part Two


I remember one of the band members telling me about a bass line in UFOria, about who's idea it was; that's in the discography, too.

This is the link to the main page of the site: Bobotunes Notice my name is on the pages, when we lived in the house before the one we live in now.

I especially like the discography pages, as I love to know how songs are conceived and birthed.

It was fun digging this up, just to see if I could. I haven't gone through more links and stuff. Research is probably my most favorite thing to to, and it's a nice bonus when I get paid to do it!


Poems/prose on this site are original works, copyrighted Julie P. Clark 2020, and may not be used without permission. DISCLAIMER: Poems and commentary should not be taken to mean any person living, dead, or otherwise.

June 10, 2020

So, how's everyone enjoying their little pandemic? We opted out of participating in the pandemic--have worn no masks or gloves. Zero. Not once. Grocery stores, hardware stores, Lowe's, etc. And no one has said anything! This crap about no dine-in restaurants in VA for a while--no prob. We ain't that far from NC, which is what we did for our recent 40th anniversary. No mask to even walk in the door. We met with my aunt who helped us a great deal when we got married and two of my cousins who still live in the area. Forty years! That's a long time, still together and still diggin' life together.

Scaled back veggie gardening this year, as I've been working on new landscaping; putting in trees and starting a new orchard on the back property now that the one in the front property is about grown to maturity. So far I have 12 cherry trees planted, 2 elderberry bushes, a pomegranate (another one from out front will be transplanted in the new orchard this fall), 4-5 blueberry bushes, and will continue adding cherry trees from the volunteer "suckers" from the mature trees. These are tart cherries that are great for pies, cordials (I make GOOD cherry cordial!), etc--tart cherries have antiviral properties that are as good as, if not better than, elderberries. I made a lot of tart cherry syrup this past winter and we have not had a cold, flu, 'rona--nothing. The syrup is made just like elderberry syrup but is a lot less expensive since we have our own cherry trees (and soon, our own elderberries) and I have about 40 pounds of cherries in the deep freezer. It has raw honey (MUST be raw), cinnamon stick, whole cloves, anise seed (not to be confused with star anise but could be used interchangeably), and whole ginger--using the powdered spices, you don't get the antiviral properties of the whole spice. I've been asked to make it for sale but I can't do that--I'd need to know a medical history and what prescriptions people are taking, so I tell them how to do it and stress highly that people do their own research--elderberry is not for everyone and could interact negatively with some medications.

Planted several Star Magnolias on either side of the front of the house, and 3 new Formosa azaleas--the oleanders were pretty but looked like crap after being hit with ice storms a time too many. The house has been repainted a darker grey and looks very nice. Out back I put in Confederate jasmine, more hostas, a rosebush, and new raised flower garden with tons of flower varieties, and, of course, lots of sunflowers. Next year (or maybe this fall), lilacs and gardenias.

As for veggies, we now have terrific sources for organic fruits/veggies at a couple of farmer's markets so I buy from them and can, freeze, etc. I just have 10 tomato plants (down from a high of 80!), 4 bell peppers, and 8 hot peppers. That way I can concentrate on the new landscaping and such. My new herb bed has parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, chives, oregano, marjoram, etc. I love using the dried herbs all winter.

I bought a reel mower (made in the USA!!!) and I love love love it! I can quickly cut grass around my various pocket gardens (I have 6 pocket gardens right now, each a little different) without the noise and stink of the push mower or riding mower. I wish I'd bought one sooner! Each pocket garden has a birdbath, and/or bee bath with lots of tempting plants for bees birdies and butterflies. Look up pocket gardens on Instagram; some are fancy, more fancy than mine. But they are just small gardens scattered here and there around the property. Once the plants start blooming and I get the gardens the way I envision them, I'll post pix. I don't do Instagram much anymore; once they messed with the algorithms and you see posts from days ago, it wasn't as much fun anymore as photos posted in real time.

All of that keeps me hopping, and tending the several birdbaths and bee baths around the front and back property. It's so cool watching the bees use the bee bath to drink! The dragonflies, too. So cool to watch. I make sure to keep all of the water baths clean. I planted tons of thyme because bees love the flowers. I hope if there's a beekeeper around that they are enjoying honey from the bees collecting pollen at my herb gardens!

That's 'bout it, just livin' life. Refuse to get caught up in pandemic pandemonium. I just laugh at all those videos being passed around about washing your groceries and sterilizing anything in the house that the groceries touched. Other than normal cleaning, we ain't sterilized shit. People need to look up what living in sterile environments does to your immune system. And what the science is about masks...I'll post some links later, gotta go hang the laundry--yep, I still use my "solar clothes dryer" and laugh at the nitwits who say we gotta be taxed more to "fight" climate change while not doing shit about it!

Ciao for niao...but here's one link:

From the New England Journal of Medicine...

"We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes). The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic."

Poems/prose on this site are original works, copyrighted Julie P. Clark 2020, and may not be used without permission. DISCLAIMER: Poems and commentary should not be taken to mean any person living, dead, or otherwise.

April 30, 2020

Part 1:
So, once in a while, but not as often now as in years past, I get these random emails. Usually asking when I will be posting on my blog again. I used to respond with something along the lines of "I'll try to get to it soon." Then I just stopped answering because I don't need to respond to nameless, faceless people.

Last week or so I received an email asking me if I knew what "So and So" was up to. And explained some of what So and So was doing. WTF? I hit "permanently delete" and then wished I hadn't, and here's why: I started thinking about who I used to email with from that Gmail account; I usually emailed So and So from my AOL (main) email account. I never emailed So and So from this particular Gmail account so he likely doesn't know of it. I wished that I had saved it to post the email in this blog. So, here's fair warning: If I receive another one of those emails; I am going to post it here, going to screenshot it and post it publicly; headers and all. I don't give a flying shit what So and So is doing.

Part 2:
Masks. The last mask I wore, I was probably 7, 8 years old. Halloween. I have not worn a mask during this pandemic and will not. I go into stores and do my own shopping (delivery or pick up, means at least one additional person before you, and sometimes 2, have also handled your groceries--and I've never seen any of those personal shoppers wearing gloves and masks...).

I wash my hands when I get home, but I've always done that. Basic hygiene. I don't wear gloves--what's the purpose if you're going to wash your hands anyway? When you take gloves off, you have to do it in such a way as to not touch the contaminated gloves and then--wash your hands. Gloves are not antibacterial; they pick up germs and viruses the same as hands. Every time you touch a cart handle, a freezer door etc, you're picking up germs.

Masks need to be handled carefully as well; I see people constantly wearing them wrong, and constantly touching them, adjusting them, and talking on their germy cellphones wearing masks. That puts germs and viruses right where you don't want them--near your nose and mouth, where they multiply quickly in that warm, moist environment. Masks are supposed to be changed when they become damp; which is very soon after donning them--you cough or sneeze, etc. Then you have to handle them with your--hands. Then you need to wash your hands again and put on a clean, dry mask. Just wash your freakin' hands people! Limit exposure if you're afraid. Personally, I have cause to think I may have had a mildish case, along with Matthew. In any case, I'll let "herd immunity" take care of it. Only a tiny fraction are sick enough to be hospitalized, and an even tinier fraction need to go on ventilators. Masks are the new virtual signaling...

This is from JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association):

Face masks should be used only by individuals who have symptoms of respiratory infection such as coughing, sneezing, or, in some cases, fever. Face masks should also be worn by health care workers, by individuals who are taking care of or are in close contact with people who have respiratory infections, or otherwise as directed by a doctor. Face masks should not be worn by healthy individuals to protect themselves from acquiring respiratory infection because there is no evidence to suggest that face masks worn by healthy individuals are effective in preventing people from becoming ill. Face masks should be reserved for those who need them because masks can be in short supply during periods of widespread respiratory infection. Because N95 respirators require special fit testing, they are not recommended for use by the general public.

How to Wear a Mask

If wearing a face mask is indicated, it is important to wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds prior to putting on the face mask. An alcohol-based sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol can also be used if soap and water are unavailable.

After cleaning your hands, place the face mask over your nose and mouth. Make sure there are no gaps between the face mask and your face, and ensure a tight seal. Try to avoid touching the face mask when wearing it. If you do touch the face mask, wash your hands or use hand sanitizer again. When you are done using the face mask, remove it without touching the front of the face mask, and discard it into a closed bin. Wash your hands again after discarding the face mask. JAMA

__

So that's what's up from me. Busy with my gardens, orchard, house, crafts projects, and my "prepper pantry." Charlie is doing well, and Matthew is doing awesome--not quite 10 years out of high school, he's pulling down $51,000 in a dream job of working with the State in fire safety. He also has a State car to drive! He's based from home and has set himself up a nice home office. What makes this extra delicious is he had a teacher during his senior year who tried to discourage him from pursuing his dream and kept him out of a class he wanted to take. Best move she could have done--he drove himself, twice a week all that winter, an hour each way, to take the class he needed and it turned out to be more educational than the high school class and he networked with some awesome people who mentored him and helped him along the way with job openings he never would have heard of otherwise, and great references from them. He's won awards for his hard work and that teacher, who is now one of his Facebook friends, sees all that he is accomplishing. And he's making more than she is!

So, if the person who sends me periodic emails is reading this--stop. I don't give two shits. And next time, I'm makin' it public--

Poems/prose on this site are original works, copyrighted Julie P. Clark 2020, and may not be used without permission. DISCLAIMER: Poems and commentary should not be taken to mean any person living, dead, or otherwise.

March 2, 2020

Helloooooo, Charlotte!

LMAO...y'all watching this on-fire Trump rally? No? You should be!

So who y'all for, the socialist or the senile geezer? Shit, he doesn't know what day it is or what it is he's running for, or what state he's in. Damn.

Socialist Sanders is gonna get hosed again; the writing is on the wall. Looks like he's gonna get that fourth house!

Ah well. We all know who's gonna win. By a landslide!

Speaking of Charlotte...what the hell is happening to that beautiful city? Homicides right and left, school violence, and it's just fucking falling apart...you been in the Charlotte airport lately? Flew threw there twice in the last few years and it's actually shocking how bad it is. The Queen City is badly tarnished, very sad.

Poems/prose on this site are original works, copyrighted Julie P. Clark 2020, and may not be used without permission. DISCLAIMER: Poems and commentary should not be taken to mean any person living, dead, or otherwise.