According to Merriam-Webster,  a talisman is "an object held to act as a charm to avert evil and bring fortune", or "something producing apparently magical or miraculous effects."

There are objects in my life, from my past, that hold a talismanic power for me. They connect me to my past - to places I can no longer go. Part of me insists that if I only have and hold the correct set of talismans, then I CAN go there again. 

I've made a list of those objects - a few of which I have, and many which are lost.

1. A bridle rosette given to me when I was six, because I loved horses. Lost.

2. A small thick ceramic coffee cup with green stripes left over from when my parents owned a hamburger shop. Lost.

3. A small gray ceramic dog which I named Andy Pandy. This is a particularly powerful talisman, which unfortunately, is lost.

4. A set of Wizard of Oz ornaments for Christmas, each representing a different family member. Lost, but remade with vintage materials. Nearly as powerful as the original set, which was destroyed by evil.

5. A small, white, smooth stone that my mother liked to run her thumb across. I have this, but I can't put my hand on it and I fear that it may be lost.

6. A ceramic bull planter with golden horns. This belongs to my father.

7. A stone my mother found near a creek - jasper, with veins of blue and white that formed a perfect eye. Lost.

8. A cast iron Scottie dog made by a foundry in my hometown. I have this.

So many of these things are lost that I am sure I can never collect enough magic to travel in time.

My next best idea is to conjure them from the past and into a painting. Make a painting that can serve as an actual time machine. If I focus my thoughts and my will and my gifts; I can create a painting that will serve as an aggregate of all the talismans I've lost. 

Then watch me go.

What I was Doing 31 Years Ago Today

Carrying on in the tradition of my mother – I will tell you what I was doing 31 years ago today. As it happens, I was doing the best thing I ever did: Bringing the most amazing person into the world.

I had been having labor pains all day long the day before, but was only 31 weeks along, so I assumed they were false labor – and everywhere I went, I said as much to whoever I ran into. ‘Hey, I think I’m in labor! Ha ha. I’m sure it’s false labor.’

If you traced my path that evening, it would look like one of those Family Circus cartoons. I stopped by Mom’s house for an hour or two to watch ‘The Wizard’. (Not be confused with the ‘Oz’ wizard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_(TV_series). Told Mom and Jennifer that I was having pains, but that it probably wasn’t really labor.

I visited Debbie Born to let her know that I was almost certainly not in labor. But maybe she ought to be on standby, just in case.

I went to Kroger to buy toilet paper. I told the cashier, (whose name was Emma - weird, what you remember, isn’t it?), “I’m having false labor.” She shoved my bag and my change at me and said, “Get out! You’re not having a baby here!” We both had a laugh.

I went home to my little efficiency apartment on Dayton Street and tried to figure out how to make the pains stop. False labor or not, it still hurt. I’d heard if you laid down on one side or the other – can’t remember which – that it would help, so I tried that. It didn’t help.

I didn’t have a phone, so I drove to the King Kwik down the street and used the payphone to call the ER at Fort Hamilton Hospital. I described the pains and told the nurse that I was sure it was false labor. She said the only way to tell for sure would be to come to the hospital and get an exam. I didn’t want to go to the hospital because I was certain that the pains would stop as soon as I got there and then I’d end up spending the night at the hospital for no reason. But I went anyway.

When I got to the hospital, I sat in the parking lot and had a frank discussion with my uterus. “Look. We’re at the hospital. You can stop with the pain now. We both know this isn’t really labor. We are a couple of months away from that. I really don’t want to go in here and get poked and prodded and end up going home in the morning feeling stupid.” My uterus didn’t provide any satisfactory cessation of pain, but I drove back home anyway.

Back at my apartment, I got into bed and curled up. The pains got worse, and closer together. It was about 2am. I was all alone, with no phone, and I realized that this was really happening. If I didn’t get up and get to the hospital soon, I wasn’t going to be able to.

So – back to Fort Hamilton. This time I went in, which turned out to be a good thing since I was pretty clearly in labor. The real kind.

Back then, Fort Hamilton didn’t have much in the way of facilities for caring for preemies, so their first priority was to get me to University Hospital in Cincinnati, tout de suite. The nurse who was caring for me informed me – with great delight – that we’d be taking the helicopter to UC. No thank you with that helicopter crap. Uh huh. No way. The nurse was all ‘yes way!’ because she was going to get to go along and it was evidently the most fun thing she could think of doing. It wasn’t really clear that I even had a choice – until the thunderstorm rolled in.

It was a WHOPPER of a thunderstorm, thanks to which I rode to UC Hospital in an ambulance, not a helicopter.

Long story short – and it is a much longer story involving, among other things, the docs at UC unsuccessfully trying to stop my labor by standing me on my head (ok, not literally – but they tilted my bed so that my head was toward the floor and my feet were pointing at the ceiling and giving me a drug that made my heart beat so fast I thought it was going to escape out my throat) – Elijah Willis was born at 3:50pm the next day.

He came flying out like a football so suddenly that the doctor almost dropped him. He weighed 3lbs. 9oz. His body from his neck to his bottom was the exact length of my hand. His foot was the length of the first two knuckles of my index fingers. He was beautiful and healthy and tiny.

nd nothing was ever the same for me. When folks tell you what it’s like to be a parent, they don’t ever tell you how completely helpless and vulnerable you are going to be to this deep and overwhelming love you feel for this little person. If they are hurt, or sick, or heartbroken, it breaks your heart too. If some little shit makes fun of their Power Ranger socks and they come home from school crying, you will find yourself wanting to kill a fourth grader. And 31 years into this whole parenthood thing – I don’t see this vulnerability waning.

But it’s worth it. Because look at this wonderful person I raised! He’s out there in the world being a deeply good person, and chasing his dreams and building his own life and future.

I love you Elijah Willis. I am proud of you every day, and I wish all the success and happiness in the world for you.

Things I have seen with my telescope

Just wanted to keep a list - so here it is: 1. The moon. 2. The sun, and sunspots. 3. Jupiter and all 4 Galilean moons. 4. Pleiades 5. Orion Nebula 6. Sirius 7. Aldebaran 8. Betelgeuse 9. Capella 10. Messier 36 (Although it's possible it was M37) 11. And a random double star that I would like to identify at some point.

Three days in a row. Yep. Don't faint.

When I noticed the date, I thought I might write about where I was September 11, 2001, but I've decided not to. I think it would feel trite and insufficient. It's hard to imagine how the world would be different if that hadn't happened because I do think a lot changed that day.

On a not entirely unrelated topic, I remember that I used to be terrified of nuclear war. There was always this undercurrent of anxiety that it was going to happen at any moment. Loud thunder in the middle of the night would cause me to wake up in a complete panic because I was sure there was a mushroom cloud nearby. Or how about the tests of the Emergency Broadcast System? Remember those? I was always so afraid that it was going to be the real thing. I hated the noise that test made. I would change the channel really quickly to make sure it wasn't on EVERY channel, because that would mean it was happening.

(Although I did hear an actual Emergency Broadcast on my car radio one day. Turned out to be related to a tornado. I hadn't even known that the Emergency Broadcast System existed for any other reason than to tell us the nuclear bombs were on the way.)

But what I'm getting at is that I was anxious all the time for years and years. At some point, I started to feel less anxious. The idea of nuclear war still terrifies me, but it only terrifies me when I think about it, and I don't have to think about it constantly. It's not always in my head.

Now I'm starting to feel the anxiety again. Not about nuclear war, or terrorist attacks, or anthrax or whatever -- I feel anxiety about the Tea Party. I feel anxiety about people who want to 'Take Our Country Back!'. For crying out loud - who do they want to take it back from?? Me?? Isn't it mine too? So what...it doesn't count if the people and policies that I support are voted for by a majority of others in the country? Suddenly our democracy isn't working anymore? I read somewhere where someone said there's a big difference between tyranny and losing an election. Yes. Listen Tea Party, I'm talking to you - if your side loses an election, it just means that you lost. It means more people disagree with you than agree with you. It does not mean that our government is broken.

So what am I worried about, specifically? Civil war. I don't really think deep in my gut that there's going to be a civil war. I think the vast majority of Americans just want to live our lives and not be bothered with a bunch of upheaval - but that doesn't prevent me feeling anxious about it anyway. It actually causes me to avoid the news altogether for weeks at a time. (Although I've recently discovered that the news is much less stressful if I just don't read online comments about the stories.) The problem is there seem to be an awful lot of lunatics in the world and an awful lot of people who will vote and act against their own self-interests because of whatever misguided notions about religion or what America is that they have.

I guess that's it. The country is full of a lot of misguided, misinformed, manipulated, and misled people. And they scare the shit out of me. I think they mean well, but they're scared too and they don't seem to know any better.

Which brings me back to where I started - 9/11. Without that, I don't think any of this would be happening. At least not in the way that it is.

How's that for a pretty good ramble?

Two days in a row!

Maybe it means something - maybe that I'll be posting more regularly!

But don't hold your breath. Really, it's just not good for you.

Well, sometimes it is. For example, I make it a policy to hold my breath any time I walk past someone who is carrying a lit cigarette, or who is coughing, or who just looks like they may stink. In those cases, not only do you have my permission to hold your breath, but I encourage you to do so.

I suppose it's time for one of those updates I post every couple of years or so. So let's see...where were we? Right. I was living in a college town in Indiana, I was in a great relationship with this hot chick who wanted to be called Kevyn in my blog, and I hated my job.

So where am I now? In a big-ass city in Indiana, still in a great relationship with Kevyn, and I still hate my job, but it's a different job and I don't hate it as much. Some days I don't hate it at all actually.

The move to the big city was prompted by the fact that not only had I been working there (and commuting from the college town), but Kevyn also ended up working there and hated the idea of commuting - so here we are. It's been an adjustment, but for the most part, we've enjoyed living here. We miss our friends back in the college town, but we try to see them as often as we can.

And speaking of kids (ok, I wasn't - but I was thinking about them which really should count. Seriously, who needs a segue?) Nate is starting what should be his senior year of college. Theater. My son is a thespian. He lives in the college town still (which will henceforth be known as C-Town) so I don't see as much of him as I'd like to. And really, that's typical too - he's always been a very busy guy and that hasn't changed. Hard-workin' kid.

Kevyn's kids are scattered hither and yon - her son lives in C-Town (graduated college last year) and her daughter is in school about 3000 miles from here. I realize I haven't written about them here before - but I will remedy that as soon as I think of fake names for them. You'll like them.

What else? Well, the economy. That's been pretty rough. Who doesn't know that though, right? I've been laid off twice in the past three years. I think I'm done with that now, at least I hope so. This job seems fairly stable and it's in a field I enjoy working in. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Oh - I almost forgot to mention that I lost 65 lbs about a year and a half ago. I don't look the same. It's been a while now, but I'm still not used to how I look in the mirror or in photographs. I'm pretty happy with this. Maybe next time I'll post about how that all came about. Maybe even...tomorrow?? Who knows. But like I mentioned before...don't hold your breath.

More soon.

I remember when I was a kid and I would occasionally torment my sisters. It was especially easy to torment my youngest sister - five years my junior and very prone to temper. I could, and did, provoke her just by looking at her. Literally.

So I would look at her, and she would scream, and our mother would say, 'Charlotte, stop looking at your sister!' And I would say, 'but I'm not HURTING her! And besides, she broke the legs on my Malibu Barbie yesterday!' And Mom would say, 'Look, you're older and you know better! Now stop looking at her!' And if I didn't, I got my ass busted.

I've been thinking about this for a couple of days - pretty much since I heard about the church in Florida that wants to have a big Quran burning. In case the parallel isn't obvious - the pastor of that church is a lot like my 12 year old self harassing my 8 year old sister just to hear her scream. He, and others, try to justify this in a variety of ways - the upshot generally being that 'this doesn't cause any real harm and besides, THEY'VE done worse!' But for cryin' out loud - that shit would not fly with my mother.

They know better than that.

And even though it's been a long time since I was a church-goer, there are a couple of things I remember pretty clearly. 1. Love one another. 2. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I am 100% certain that Jesus would NOT burn a pile of Qurans - because when you get right down to it, even though the consequences could be much graver, it's just a variation on the theme of sticking your tongue out at your little sister. It's petty and provocative.

And I'm tellin' Mom.

Click to see this at full size. I saw this one day on my way back from lunch and had to go grab a camera to get a pic. The woman who owned the store caught me in the midst of snapping the pic and said, 'You need a picture of my door??'. I didn't know what to say, so I just nodded and then fled. I figure either she'll figure out that her sign had a pretty funny mistake, or maybe she'll think I'm an evil villian of some sort. Either way - it's all good.