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thepauser

~ “I have never tried that before, so I think I should definitely be able to do that.” Pippi Longstocking (Astrid Lindgren)

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Monthly Archives: January 2015

Thursday Stretch: Song of the Month

30 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by koehlerjoni in Music, Song of the Month

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Tags

Beth Nielsen Chapman, Cynthia Clawson, Doing something that terrifies you, Song of the Month

When I started this blog five months ago, I thought it would be fun to sing my blog audience a song once a month.  Now, I’m simply fulfilling my goal.  If you’ve been following the pauser, you know my philosophy: If thinking about doing something makes you feel uncomfortable, you should probably do it. And if the idea terrifies me, I have no choice, I have to try.  So I’m trying.  I’ve put it off for five months, and now it’s time.

Two weeks ago, the inimitable Cynthia Clawson sang at our church.  She sat at the grand piano and played a brief introduction.  Then she looked at the audience and sang the first line; Life has taught me this. I knew before she was finished with the first stanza that I would be presenting “How We Love” as my song of the month.  Cynthia and the author of this song, Beth Nielsen Chapman, sing it and play it better than I do, but it comes from my heart.

I had not heard of Beth Nielsen Chapman before “How We Love” came into my life, but have had the privilege of listening to some more of her wonderful music in the interim.  Here, she is performing “Sand and Water,” a tribute to her late husband.  Her lyrics speak for themselves.

Thank you so much for reading, and for listening.

p.s.  I know it’s Friday.  I had a hard time uploading the video to youtube last night.

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Daily Discomfort: Understanding Tw!##@r Symbols, or What the !##@!

28 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by koehlerjoni in Essay, Humor, Social Media, Twitter, Writing

≈ Comments Off on Daily Discomfort: Understanding Tw!##@r Symbols, or What the !##@!

Tags

sentence construction skills, social media, twitter, twitter party, twitter symbols, understanding social media, writing

I know I’ve come to the twitter party late.  I know I’m a gate crasher because I’m over thirty, but I’m trying to understand, I really am. I’ve had an epiphany.  Twitter represents another language.  While we tweet some words in our native tongue, the construct, the mixing of symbols and short bursts of texts, and the way a person could meander through the maze of links, like a spider web, like 7 steps from Kevin Bacon, is a new form of communication.  When I approach my exploration of Twitter with this in mind, I feel much less intimidated.

I’ve been most mystified by the use of Twitter symbols.  Here’s what puts me off:

  • I don’t understand what the symbols mean.  I understand the definition of the “at” symbol and the hashtag; I could recite the definitions to you.  But that doesn’t indicate a deep enough grasp of meaning to enable me to use the symbols with confidence.
  • Tweets are difficult to read.  They are all unsentency.

This is an example of a tweet that was in my feed recently.  It was written by a respected literacy expert.  Before I can read this sentence (is it a sentence?  I don’t know) my thinking about language has to detach itself from my cerebral cortex.   I comprehend this tweet at the speed of paint drying, which is diametrically opposed to my usual way of reading—think Speedy Gonzalez.

Teaching #NoticeandNote? Watch! http://bit.ly/1y0vNzt  Words of Wiser #Reel Wisdom via @VanderVeldeLori @DrLWalczak @USMBrad @hhreimerz (Sorry-I don’t know enough to maintain all of these great links)

I’ve decided.  I’m an intelligent woman.  Twitter’s Wild West version of language is not going to beat me! Here and now, I’m taking this tweet apart and writing down what everything means.  I will practice reading and writing tweets until I’m able to host my own twitter party, with virtual nuts and cocktails and everything.  Must get out the glue and scissors, because I don’t know how to create a great visual on the computer (yet!).

Here is my thinking about what this tweet means.

This twit is learning!

This twit is learning!

Feel free to let me know if I am wrong. At least I’ve made a start.  In writing about my confusion with twitter, I’ve increased my level of comfort with the format and I think I have some ideas about how I can use it to get some of my words out into the universe.  I “atted” my first person the other day, although I don’t think my “atting” looked anything like the mentor tweet.  My next hurdle is to hashtag something. I also wonder if when you hashtag, you just write whatever you feel like and hope somebody else is thinking about that topic too?  If I wrote #uglycookiejars, would my poor hashtag just float out there in the WWW alone and unwanted?  That’s a topic for further study.

Pauser Poll #1: Pillows!

26 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by koehlerjoni in Humor, Marriage, Poll

≈ Comments Off on Pauser Poll #1: Pillows!

Tags

decorative pillows, Pauser Poll

 pauser poll pillows

For two months now, I’ve intended to push my knowledge of blogging by posting a poll.  Now, I have a perfect topic for my poll, and it’s pillows.  Super Husband and I had a rather heated discussion late one night last week concerning the number of pillows on our bed.  His stance is that of the eight pillows that now reside there, only one pillow belongs to him.  My stance is that I have two pillows, and the other five are to make the bed pretty.  They came with the bedspread I bought, and therefore, are community property.  He used a rather nasty expletive in reference to said pillows.  I told him he needed to pray about his attitude. What he did next was low down and dirty.

He went to work and asked everyone he saw for the next two days about the number of pillows on their beds.  Most of the people he works with are men, and of course, they sided with him.  Now he thinks he’s all that, and wants to reduce the number of pillows on our bed, which I do not want. I like those pillows.  I”m attached.  But I’m willing to listen to reason.

Please take my pillow poll. If the Spartans dominate, then I’ll take a couple of pillows off the bed.  And put them in the guest bedroom.  Where Super Husband can sleep.

Daily Discomfort: To Tweet or not to Tweet

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by koehlerjoni in Essay, Humor, Social Media, Twitter

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

humor, social media, twitter, understanding social media

The original tweeter

The original tweeter

One of the personal imperatives I have given myself is to understand social media.  I’m fifty- five years old, and I’ve spent my life like all the rest of you half centurions out there; I worked, got married, had kids, worked, worked, and worked.   Now that I’m on a pause (not retired, just a break) I have the time to investigate the virtual world.  I ‘m turning my attention to twitter for no less than two and no more than four weeks, because twitter leaves me feeling flummoxed, gobsmacked, confused, and downright twitchy.

I have a twitter account, and it is linked to my website. This is only because the instructor in my basic blogging course said it would be a good way to recruit followers.  However, I’ve rarely visited it, because of those feeling words I mentioned above.  In order to gain understanding of how Twitter works, I visited the Twitter FAQS page.  Here is what Twitter has to say for themselves.

What do I Tweet?

It’s only interesting if she’s my grandma.

Twitter says…

“The best tweets share meaningful moments, big and small. Quote your grandma, share a photo of your pet sloth, or make a Vine video of your youngest doing a tricycle wheelie.  If you think it’s interesting, chances are your followers will too.”

I say…

If your grandma is my grandma, I might care about what she says, maybe.  If you have a pet sloth, keep that smelliness to yourself.  If your child can do a wheelie with a tricycle, it’s time for a bike.  If you think it’s interesting, I will probably not think it is interesting.  If the above examples are what you think is interesting. 

Where do Tweets Live?

What happened to the news?

What happened to the news?

Twitter says…

“When you follow people, their Tweets instantly show up in your timeline.  Similarly, your Tweets show up in your followers’ timelines. To see interesting Tweets, follow interesting people: friends, celebrities, news sources, or anyone whose Tweets you enjoy.”

I say…

Do the interesting people have sloths?  I am against sloths.  Also, do the aforementioned celebrities talk about their grandmas?  Do news sources include any real news, or are the Twitter news sources like that television show ET?  Because on ET, I don’t know who any of those celebrities are that they report on. Except for Justin Beiber, and I put him in the same slot as the sloth. Are these “news sources” like the regular network news, how they’ve stopped reporting about local stuff and the wars and atrocities going on in the world and if the spinach you buy at the grocery store has been recalled, and are now focusing on the Octomom and someone in Kansas whose trailer home was destroyed by a tornado?  Besides, all I can see when I look at twitter feeds from news sites like Reuters is a reminder to visit Reuters’ website.  Do I really need that extra step?  Can’t I just go directly to the website?

 I follow 30 different folks on twitter.  They are writers, magazine editors, educators, and all are folks who should have something to say.  However, if my twitter feed were a book, the genre would be a cross between a sorority confessional and an overstuffed first novel by a twenty year old with a little talent and a lot of arrogance.    Maybe there’s a code within twitter’s 140 character message in which the interesting people hide messages, but I haven’t managed to break it.

Why 140 characters?

Twitter- just for the slothful?

Twitter- just for the slothful?

Twitter says…

“We like to keep it short and sweet! It also just so happens that 140 characters is the perfect length for sending status updates via text message. The standard text message length in most places is 160 characters per message. We reserve 20 characters for people’s names, and the other 140 are all yours!”

I say…

What if my name is only ten characters?  Can I have the ten unused characters back?  I usually don’t get out of bed for less than two hundred and fifty characters.  Can we open up some sort of negotiation?  I take exception to your “perfect length,” comment.  That’s your opinion.  For me, something much longer is perfect.  I have things to say. And what is a status update? I looked up the word status in the dictionary.  It means the relative social, professional, or other standing of someone or something.  It also means the position of affairs at a particular time, especially as it relates to economics.  My status is pretty stable, thank you very much.  Just because I post something new to my website, that doesn’t mean my social standing or position of affairs has changed one iota.  I also don’t think that your status changes just because your boss made you work an extra hour on your shift at Burger King.  I also don’t think tweeting fifty messages in a row with the “F” word in them changes your status, even if your tweets reveal your status of being a tool.  All over the world, school kids are getting the wrong idea about the meaning of the word status, and you and the Facebook have something to answer for in this department.

Will I continue my twitter account?  That is the question.  I keep thinking that there has to be more to social media than what meets the eye, so I will continue my hard hitting investigation next week, in which I’ll delve into twitter symbols and the retweet.  Until then this reporter is signing out.

So.. no posts this week.

16 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by koehlerjoni in Uncategorized

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I’ve been under the weather this week, so I’ll start over on my blog posts again on Monday.  Hope everyone out there is staying warm and dry.  Have a great day!

Daily Discomfort: Frozen

08 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by koehlerjoni in Essay, Non Fiction, Personal Narrative, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Alpine Texas, Big Bend Region, Frozen, Ice Storm, Marathon Texas, Marfa Lights, Marfa Texas, Power outages in west texas, West Texas

Marathon, Texas- Scope for the imagination.

Marathon, Texas- Scope for the imagination.

In South Texas, our cold snaps are brief and bitter, but if the cold brings ice, we shut the town down and sit in our houses with big thick books on our laps.  We wait until the afternoon, when the sun almost always comes out, and it’s all over for another five or six years.  When we planned our vacation to the Big Bend area of West Texas, we knew there was a possibility it would be colder than home, but I don’t believe we were prepared for the reality of cold, truly cold, nasty, lasting nasty, weather.

Our first stop, Marathon, was cold but dry.  Marathon is a gateway to Big Bend National Park, and there is one hotel, The Gage, and one grocery store, The French Grocer.  The hotel has a restaurant and a bar, and there are a couple of other places open for breakfast.  There’s a post office, a liquor store, and a couple of gift shops and a couple of art galleries.  And that’s pretty much it.

SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES

The road to Alpine, January 2, 2015

The next morning we decided Alpine, the largest town in the region, was the best option for shopping.  Alpine has a higher elevation in the area, and as we approached, the roads started to ice over and the surrounding landscape got whiter and whiter.  It was beautiful and disconcerting.  A sign on the side of the road warned of black ice.  We drove slowly, our more experienced fellow travelers passing us like Apollo Ono overtaking a Jamaican speed skater.

We shopped for thirty minutes, clinging to one another to keep from slipping on the ice.  With all entertainment possibilities exhausted, we drove back to Marathon.

The power was out in Marathon, but the bar was open, so we went there and drank.  Sitting near the propane fire place, sipping on a margarita, we had a delightful conversation with a couple who owned a vacation home in the area.  The man told us about the old feldspar mine, and that it once had up to 8,000 employees. The only background sound was the occasional shush of the fire.  How long had it been since we sat and talked to someone, no phones to check, no television to sneak an occasional glance at, nothing but the fire and our voices?

Later, as we flicked our flashlights around the shelves at the French Grocer, the person who worked there told us the last time the power had gone out, it had taken three days to restore it.  They said they were sorry, they needed to keep the refrigerator doors closed, so we bought our supper from their shelves; moon pie, cheese sticks (for me), beanie weenies (for SH) and those powdered sugar donuts.  We ate by flashlight in our room, bundled on more clothes and got in bed.  We would read for a while, then huddle up close and discuss how it must have been before people had power. We talked about the places we want to see in the next calendar year.  We fell asleep before nine o’clock, rising long after the sun had come up.  When was the last time either one of us slept for more than eight hours?

We returned to Alpine the next morning, hoping we’d be able to get a meal since the power was still out in Marathon. The drive was, again, beautiful and terrifying.  There were several places on the side of the road where a car had obviously plowed into the ditch, and we saw a brown truck all banged up, with evidence it had flipped over and skidded.  Someone had taped a yellow tarp over the side windows before abandoning it on the side of the road.

As we drove, we could also see large sections of downed power lines.  While some utility vehicles rested in the fields, it was clear it would be next to impossible to fix the immense amount of damage properly until the ground and power lines were no longer frozen.  We weren’t surprised to find the power was out for about half of the city of Alpine.

January 3, 2015, Alpine Texas

January 3, 2015, Alpine Texas

Judy’s Bread and Breakfast appeared to be the only port in the storm.  They were open and doing a bustling business.  The waitress showed us to our table, stating the credit card machine wasn’t  working, we’d have to pay cash.  She was the only waitress, and Judy herself was the lone cook.  I noticed a man pouring coffee for people, but he went around to a few tables and then sat down, so he was a guest who decided to pitch in for a while.

The waitress brought us two cups of coffee.  When we asked to order our meal, her face read overwhelmed.  The room was packed and more people were entering.

I’m a writer, and I listen.  I watch.  And on this day, in Judy’s Bread and Breakfast, I witnessed a true community.

Ellizabeth Sapp, local heroine.

Ellizabeth Sapp, local heroine.

Elizabeth Sapp and her three small children, Hunter, Dalton, and Kirsten, sat at a table near us.  When the waitress approached, she did the same thing we’d done and told the waitress her order.  I heard her say, “Yes she can, I used to work here. Over hard. Write down OH.”   The waitress left Elizabeth’s table, and Elizabeth watched her thoughtfully.  She told her children, “Sit right here.” She went to the counter and asked Judy if she could help.

While Elizabeth handed around the coffee and delivered food, the children sat quietly at the table waiting for their breakfast.  As their mother worked to meet the needs of the customers, the children started to fidget.  I thought about moving to the table to keep them company, but Elizabeth didn’t know me; no one in the restaurant knew me, except for SH.  I didn’t want to scare the children or their mother, but I knew her actions were extraordinary and important.  She was caring for a bunch of cold, powerless, hungry people, caring for them so they wouldn’t be broken within the space of this small apocalypse.   Someone should see to her children so she could do what was necessary.

Elane says, "The kids are the special ones, not me!"

Elane says, “The kids are the special ones, not me!”

Elane V. Scott was sitting at a nearby table as well. She left the conversation at her own table to sit with the children. Handing them pens and paper, she spoke softly as they started to scribble.   I watched Hunter, Dalton, and Kirsten turn their curious faces into Elane’s. Elizabeth drifted over to the table to make sure her children were in good hands, and when she knew her brood was well tended, she continued to serve her community.

A young couple entered the restaurant with a baby.  There was only one table available and it hadn’t been bussed.  A customer stood up and told the couple about the credit machine.  He cleared the table and returned with a rag to wipe it down.  A third man came by and poured us more coffee.

Can't leave out Kirsten!

Can’t leave out Kirsten!

I wondered about Judy herself, and all the hard work, relationship building, and years of compassion she must have poured into her community.  The people in this place, in this time of crisis, were used to pulling together. The room was filled with quiet confidence and the assumption that acting like a neighbor is expected. “If there’s ever an apocalypse,” I thought, “I’m coming to Alpine.”

The house we’d reserved had no power or water, so with no place to stay, we moved on to Marfa, and found the last hotel room they offered.  The weather was warming, and the town had power as well as gas.  That evening, we went to see the Marfa Lights.  We’ve been there many times, and I confess myself a skeptic, but I saw them then; little flashes, slashes, and slithers of light.  The moon hung above us in casual splendor.

The next day we picked up our daughter and her husband, who’d been staying with a group of friends and planning to spend three more nights with us at the other rental.  As we drove home, SH said, “You know how you before Christmas is your least favorite time of year?  Well, this is mine.  It’s still cold outside, and the Christmas lights get put away and everybody leaves, and I have to go back to work.”

Everybody leaves, including the two who slept in the back seat of our car.  In a couple of days they would head back to their lives on the other side of the country, and it would just be the two of us again.  We’ve been married for thirty years, and I’d never understood why he was so resistant to putting up the Christmas tree.  When would we again be quiet enough in ourselves and in each other to reveal these truths to one another?  How long would it we before we were this gushy, this warm, this unfrozen?

Today, January 7, the house is quiet.  The children have been delivered to the airport, and Super H is back to his job.  A  Blue Norther swept across South Texas this afternoon, and all the plants had to be covered.  The dogs need their heater and heat lamp.  Hot meat loaf and mashed potatoes for supper.  I see his car coming up the driveway.  Right before he walks through the door, I hurry into the living room and turn on the Christmas tree lights.

The unfrozen moon, over Marfa.

The unfrozen moon, over Marfa.

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  • If you get an Outfit, You can Go to Zumba, too.

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