This is a VERY simple movie for me to review. If you were one of the students who adored Sartre’ and “got” Albert Camus’ book “The Stranger”, you’ll love “The Box”. If you understand “Waiting for Godot”, you’ll sop this movie up with a biscuit. It is an existential masterpiece.

I hated it.

Sure, Budge loved it. She’s even seen it twice. Of course, Budge also had a crisis of conscience when she was in AP English because she thought she was becoming an Existentialist, which, in the South, is the same as thinking you are becoming an Atheist.

Just in terms of “moviespeak” the acting was horrible. Cameron Diaz tries to affect a Southern accent and doesn’t get close, and nothing is worse to the ear of a good ol’ wild eyed Southern boy than a fake Southern accent.

The movie DOES have one redeeming quality . . . it showcases decor from the 1970s that I haven’t seen since I was a child. Remember avocado colored appliances anyone?

The Movie is VASTLY Inferior to the Book.

NOTA BENE: This post was inadvertently not published on 10-23-09 when I actually saw the movie and wrote the review, but I hate to waste writing and I really hated the movie.

Just got in from seeing the heavily hyped Where the Wild Things Are with three of my favorite ladies in the whole world: Budge, the Girl Child, and the Girly Girl. I could say a lot, but in all honesty, I’m still in a bit of a shock at how not-what-I-expected this movie turned out to be. I didn’t HATE it, but it wasn’t what I was looking for.

First of all, this is NOT a children friendly movie. Any child under age ten with the least bit of an imagination will have nightmares about MULTIPLE scenes in the film. It is surrealistically frightening in several places. Second of all, the movie is DEEP on some levels. That’s not bad, but it’s nothing like I expected either. Children, unless they are supernaturally precocious won’t “get” this movie at all. Everyone who does “get” it is going to be very sad, which brings me to my final idea that the movie is a TREMENDOUS downer. Don’t go thinking you are going to see a colorful enactment of a beloved children’s book. You aren’t. You’re going to see a morality play that will leave you in a funk for hours if you are of a regular emotional constitution. If you are like me, you may unfold from the finger-sucking fetal position in two or three days.

I will say one thing about the movie and hope no one judges me harshly for the multitudinous indiscretions of my youth. If you ignore the moral and pretend you haven’t read the book, you are in for a long, strange trip. The last time I felt like I did tonight after leaving a movie, I was in college and watched a double feature of Pink Floyd’s The Wall AND The Dark Side of the Rainbow in a VERY “smoky” apartment while simultaneously “riding the Magic Bus“, if you know what I mean. Taken just as a visual, this movie is like . . . wow, man.

Otherwise, wait for the DVD so you can watch barefooted and comfortably numb.

Love y’all. Have a good weekend.

We fell back last night and took back our hour of sleep that was so rudely stolen from us back in the late spring. Now, for a large majority of the people in the places where this biannual clock changing is enforced, the event passed largely unnoticed. For a select few, however, last night was a PITAS of the highest degree. Anyone working in a manufacturing plant last night had a bad time.

See at one time, we had more textile plants (factories, if you must) here in the South than a feral dog has fleas and ticks. For over a hundred years, textiles fueled this region and new cotton mills seemed to pop up like so many toadstools after a hard rain. All that wouldn’t matter as much to me except that much of my family went through a spell at one or the other local mills. In my own time, I spent a few dreary summers in one of the many textile plants owned by the richest man in South Carolina. He has always been known as a bit of a miser, so everyone in his plants worked “swing shifts”.

To the uninitiated, most factories run on three eight hour shifts: First is 8 AM to 4 PM, Second is 4 PM to 12 Midnight, and Third (or Graveyard) lasts from 12 Midnight to 8 AM. If you worked a swing shift, you would spend a week on First, then a week on Second, then a week on Third and the next week back to First. It was brutal to say the least, but in a factory running swing shifts, the owners don’t have to pay a shift premium because everyone works all the shifts. Again, for those not accustomed to the lint-head lifestyle, a shift premium is the extra pay you draw for working an “off” shift — Second or Third. Most of the time, you’d get so much more for Second and then double that for working Third. It was a way of rewarding bleary-eyed drives home in early morning and basically shooting any of one’s body’s natural circadian rhythms in the head.

Now, I gave y’all that  quasi-history lesson to tell you this — under no circumstances did you want to be working Third when the time “fell back”. See, if you don’t know, the time actually changes at 2:00 AM. Most people just set the clocks back and go to bed. Not in a cotton mill. Oh no. The one time I was unfortunate enough to get caught on fall back night, I joined a group at the time clock and watched at 2:00 as the clock wound back to 1:00 AM. A whole miserable hour of hot, lint-filled, and sweaty work was just erased like so much chaff on the wind. It was heart breaking and the worst thing was, you didn’t get paid extra even though you worked 9 hours instead of 8 because your time card would show 8 hours and not 9. The Man got an extra pound of flesh for nothing.

It’s been many a year since I walked the machine aisles picking up lint waste, but I haven’t forgotten that cruel irony. Sadly, what few manufacturing plants that still run today around here have continued that barbaric practice. Unfortunately, most of them run 12 hour shifts so the late shift works 13 hours!

Of course, “jump forward” night in the spring was different, but who wants to talk about that !

Sleep good and enjoy waking to daylight and not dark, y’all, and as always, don’t forget to scrub your necks and wash your feet. Love y’all!

When I was growing up, we lived in the back forty acres of the boondocks. I took some friends home from college to meet my mama over the holidays once and two of them swore we lived in a different time zone, if not another space time continuum. Living that far from nowhere meant that social events were scarce, but for a kid with a sugar craving on All Saint’s Eve, it was death. I LITERALLY had no where within walking distance of my house and we lived so far out we’d have to eat all the candy we got driving around just to survive the trip. So in the era of my childhood, preceding all the newfangled “Trunk or Treats” , the highlight of Halloween for me, my brother’s generation, and my dad’s generation was the annual trip to Greenpond to visit Aunt Nell and drink her Witch’s Brew.

Twenty or so years ago in Greenpond. My baby first cousin, Blake, is the Blue Dinosaur; my brother, Nick, is the redhead behind him; Aunt Nell is in the witch's costume; my second cousin, Anna, is next to Aunt Nell and is holding a child I don't recognize; and Zach, my oldest first cousin, is standing behind Anna.

See, when Daddy and Aunt Cathy, as well as all the First Cousins, were children, they lived in the boonies as well; so they didn’t have anywhere to get candy on Halloween either. In an effort to give the children somewhere to wear their costumes and get some candy, Papa Wham’s sister, my great-Aunt Nell, started dressing up in a witch’s costume on Halloween and hosting a small gathering. She’d put a huge (well, huge for a five year old) cauldron of what she swore was witch’s brew on an open fire in front of her open and detached garage then pop up a huge amount of pop corn and lay out a great stock of candies.

Children — first my daddy’s generation, then mine — would come with their parents and eat popcorn and run around the pitch black yard in our costumes playing hide and seek until we vomited. It was our unofficial family reunion and most Halloween nights, just about every lineal descendant of Granny Mattie would make their way up Aunt Nell’s winding driveway. Rain or shine, she always turned out.

The Witch of Greenpond became pretty much a local legend. Aunt Nell made the cover of the local weekly newspapers and in all the years I can remember, she never missed a Halloween. Time comes for us all though, even good witches, and the year finally arrived when Aunt Nell simply couldn’t take on the night’s festivities. Alzheimer’s Disease had robbed her of the memory of the wonderful times she’d given all of us and the rest of the rural children of the surrounding countryside.

That year, about six or seven years ago now, I think, the pointed hat was passed. Anna, the adorable little blonde standing next to Aunt Nell in the picture, took up the mantle of the Greenpond Witch from her grandmother. Now she presides over the ceremony that has meant so much to so many people for so long. Now, rain or shine (and tonight was a frog-floater) the cauldron still gets lit and the children still come to eat popcorn, chase each other, and drink a cup of Witch’s Brew . . . which still tastes suspiciously like cherry Kool-Aid.

Happy Halloween, y’all, and don’t forget to wash your feet after you come in from trick or treating!

Behold the lowly acorn; sign of Fall, food for wildlife, and deadly missile!

I love Fall. From now until the end of November is hands down my favorite time of the year. Granny Wham always loved Fall. As soon as the weather got nippish at night, she’d tell Papa it was time to go see the leaves. That meant I’d spend the night with them on an October Friday and we’d get up at the butt-crack of dawn the next morning to head to the Blue Ridge Parkway. As long as we were on the highways, I’d read. I wish I still could read in a moving car, but for some reason, carsickness hits as soon as I look at a page . . . but I digress from my digression!

The three of us would spend all day in the mountains looking at the golds, reds, and yellows all along the mountain roads. Still, this was Granny and she is who I took the lion’s share of my worrying tendencies from, so we’d have to be headed down I-26 towards home before the first sign of dark. Granny didn’t like to travel at night.

So Fall has always held a particularly warm place in my heart from an early age. However, this beautiful season is not without its extreme hazards. In my front yard are three extremely tall and extremely productive oak trees. Overhanging my back fence are about ten or twelve more. Now, while they are a wonder to look at, it is with some trepidation that I venture forth from the safety of the front porch to journey to the mailbox.

You see, these oaks do not produce the dinky little BB sized acorns. Oh, no! These trees shed acorns that, if cast in lead, could have been fired in a .68 caliber Brown Bess musket with no trouble at all. My trees are well over fifty feet tall and when one of those green slugs lets go from a bough near the top, it stands to reach terminal velocity before it makes contact with the ground . . . or my balding pate! Getting cracked in the top of the head with one or two of those little monsters is enough to bring tears to a strong man’s eyes. What’s just as bad, the trees in the back lot overhang my tin-roofed workshop. When acorns hit that tin roof at about Mach 1, they make a crack like a 12 gauge shotgun going off.

Now, this doesn’t bother my oldest fuzzy child, Beau, in the least. He is stone deaf as befits a canine of his years and stature. His kennelmate, Jack, however, goes into paroxysms each time a shot rings out from the tin roof. I have to admit that I find them startling as well. More than once I’ve nearly put out an eye with an Xacto knife as I was cutting and concentrating when one of the green hailstones hit!

Still, the squirrels and deer the crop of mast attracts to my back yard is plenty enough reason for me to leave the trees alone and risk a knot on the noggin or four!

Happy Autumn everyone! Don’t forget to wash your feet!

Hello to my three loyal readers!

As most of you know, I’ve been out of work since June. I won’t go in to details, other than to say my former district shut down a school and so I became the sixth librarian in a five school district. So, I was bumped from my job in favor of a person with less than a quarter of my ability but three times my seniority. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

Anyway, I’ve been casting about for ways to keep my questionable sanity intact. To that end, I’ve launched some more blogs. Each blog will now have a focus instead of being a catch-all for whatever jumps into my head at the time. The new lineup will go something like this:

“Granny Beads & Grocery Store Feet” will remain my flagship blog. It will actually improve now because it will now take over as the repository of my memoir, story, and anecdote collection about my life growing up and living in the small-town South. This will now be a “politic, employment, and hopefully angst free zone.”  I’ve been asked to write a book. Well, this is where it’ll get written.

“Insomnia Inducers” is a niche blog that appeals to the neurotic, OCD, paranoid side of me. To call me a pessimist would be to defame good pessimists throughout the world. “II” will be slavishly devoted to publishing the growing list of horrible things that keep me awake at night. Truthfully, if it’s on “II”, then I’ve literally lost sleep over it.

“The Idiot Patrol” is my attempt to point out the overwhelming plethora of people in this world who should have the common decency to do us all a favor and stop breathing the air that other people so desperately need. Each update will point out a person who fits my very liberal definition of an idiot for some reason. They could be mean or a boor or a leader who is incompetent to the point of criminality. Each and every one will get my undivided attention for around 500 words. This blog will be political, employment related, and probably riddled with middle aged W.A.S.P.  angst masquerading as righteous indignation.

Finally, I’m launching “The American Reality”. This blog, located at nomoredream.wordpress.com since I couldn’t get the address I wanted, will be where I play pundit and solve every problem the world has to offer with wit and the wisdom passed down to me by my ancestors. Here, I will hold forth on education, politics, movements (bowel and otherwise), and pretty much all the rest of the hot-button issues of the day. If you want my opinion on all things public, this will be where to turn and I’ll go ahead and guess that y’all probably won’t like it.

In time, I hope to launch a one-page web site that gives a jumping off point to each of these endeavors as well as including other items of interest to me. I hope you all like the line up. It’s what I’m praying will keep me from going off the deep end of the shallow pier.

Check them out and keep your feet clean, y’all!

I had a Facebook conversation last week with my favorite Georgia Peach, Buffy “the Unquiet Librarian” Hamilton about an article she’d posted on Facebook. In a nutshell, the Sports Illustrated article dealt with the fallout around an Ohio public school district’s decision to cut ALL extracurricular activities. No band, no afterschool clubs, and, most shockingly, NO SPORTS. Ms. Hamilton point out how she wished communities would get in a comparable uproar over shutting down library programs. I had a response for her that we discussed via chat.

Peaches understood my response, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to make me any friends here. Of course, y’all know I shoot straight and call them like I seem them. This is no place for the squeamish or hopelessly idealistic. I told her that outcry over libraries would never reach the levels of outrage over canceling sports simply because sports are more important to schools and communities than school libraries.

Libraries can’t begin to compete with the importance of sports to a school, especially in impoverished urban or rural areas. How many high school students do you know who wake up chomping at the bit to get to the library? Sure, some are out there, but compare that to the number of students in your school who willingly shell out money to sit in the stands on Friday night. Sports are the ONLY reason many, many students attend school at all. Take away sports and attendance at high risk schools will decline because the former athletes — often among the lowest socio-economic class — will have no reason to get up and come to school. They will have no reason to get up and come to school because . . . well, hold that thought because that’ll be tomorrow’s post.

To keep in this vein, however, football is big business. Nothing galvanizes a school like a winning team. When’s the last time your school held a pep rally and devoted “prime instructional time” to a new shipment of books or new computers for the media center? When’s the last time your library produced revenue for the school? Instead, our institutions are a drain on revenue. When’s the last time, other than a faculty meeting, that the entire district population was “encouraged” to attend a library event like a bookfair? Never? But I have known superintendents and principals who “strongly encouraged” everyone in the district to attend a crucial Friday night fight. Oh yeah, and don’t tell me they can’t do it because I and a lot of my three regular readers live in the South where football is king and we don’t have unions to hide behind so if an administrator tells you to do something or be somewhere, you’d best do it or be prepared for consequences and repercussions.

Now I figure those educators who are still reading are pretty bent by now, so let’s just keep on bending. Football and other sports serve a legitimate purpose as an outlet for energy and competition. They get kids moving and involved and moved and involved kids want to come to school and want to learn. What does a library have to compete with that? Very little.

Now I know someone out there is going to comment on a Keith Curry Lance study or some such nonsense about “libraries raise test scores through the roof.” Before you get on that soapbox, let me go ahead and say, nope — I don’t believe it and I’ve read the same reports you have. The typical high stakes standardized tests that are used to evaluate students’ AND TEACHERS’ performance have no component that would be increased by time in a library. We have all proctored enough of those tests to know they are not overflowing with HOTS, no matter what the DO and the curriculum experts try to sell us. They are read and regurgitate and if you want students to blow those tests away, you skill and drill them until they want to cry and you want to join them in the sob-fest.

Sports and other ECAs give kids a reason to live after surviving a week or two of those tests AND the mind-numbing weeks of preparation that goes into them. Sports reach the whole school while libraries only reach a small portion since most teachers can’t afford time away from test prep to actually engage in a worthwhile lesson and can’t afford to “waste” precious planning period rest time to engage in meaningful collaboration.

Call me a fool, call me a traitor to my profession, or call me a dirty footed scoundrel, but prove me wrong first. Until education is revolutionized rather than reformed in this country, football and sports in general will be more important to schools and communities that school libraries.

Sorry to upset y’all. It’s just the way it is.

One of my all time favorite kids is turning sixteen tomorrow. She was one of my best customers back when I had a job as a middle school librarian and I wanted to do something for her special day, but as you can imagine, being out of work has seriously cut into the gift giving budget, so I sent her a card and enclosed a two page note that I wish someone had given me when I was turning sixteen. Maybe things would have turned out differently. Do you think I gave her good advice?

Dear _____,

You are turning sweet 16! Though you may not believe it, what comes next is probably the most important five year period of your life. From 16 to 21, you will make a ton of decisions that will affect the rest of your life. The problem is, you sometimes won’t know that you are about to make such a life changing decision until you look back on that moment from ten or twenty years down the road. For that reason, you must be careful and thoughtful about everything you do. I’ve got a few things to tell you about what’s coming that I really wish someone had told me when I was 16, but no one was around to tell me. Trust me when I say everything I’m going to tell you are lessons I learned the hard way by making mistakes, some of which I am still paying for to this day.

First, sex. Just say no. I realize that is sometimes easier said than done, especially when “everyone is doing it” and every TV show, movie, and song seems to be screaming that it’s okay and you are weird if you don’t sleep with everyone who comes along. Well, take it from me, they are wrong. Having sex too soon is a really good way to train-wreck your life in a hurry. Aside from the obvious fact that you can contract dieseases and get pregnant, you can also be devastated emotionally. I promise you, as someone who knows too well, a lifetime of regret and second guessing is not worth a few minutes of what seems like the ultimate pleasure. Also, your generation seems to have trouble sometimes figuring out “what is sex.” This is a simple question. If you have to wonder if what you are thinking of doing is sexual, then it’s sex and don’t do it. It’s just not worth it.

Second, relationships. In the next five years, you’ll cement some relationships that will last for the rest of your life. Oddly enough, some of the people you think you’ll be friends with forever will drift away while some people you never dreamed of speaking to will turn out to be your dearest friends. You won’t make all the friends you’ll ever have by 21, but you’ll get a good start. You’ll also come across a boy or two that you thought at first would make a good boyfriend but after awhile you’ll see that he’s really a great boy who’s a friend. Hold on to those because friends of the opposite sex can give you insight into some decisions that your very best girlfriends can’t.

While I’m talking about relationships, don’t forget the most important relationships of all and that’s family. You will be sorely tempted many times in the next five years to think that your parents are idiots who know nothing and are completely out of touch with reality. However, if you will watch your tongue and try, just try, to listen to them, you will be shocked when you are 30 at how incredibly intelligent they have become. No relationships are more important than family. They are the ones who have been with you the longest and you didn’t get to pick each other – you just got stuck together by Someone who is a lot smarter than all of us. If you break ties with your family, you will live to regret it. Again, I know from experience what I’m talking about. When those family members are gone, you’ll be shocked at how lonely life can be.

College and jobs. Go to college or don’t go to college. You can make it in life either way. Just don’t go to college or pick what college you go to just because “everyone else is going there”. Following what everyone else does is another really good way to train-wreck your life because you aren’t everyone else. When you decide on a career, remember this – you will spend more waking hours at your job than you will anything else in your life. If you think being in school and hating it sucks, you’ve never laid in bed listening to the clock go off and nearly bursting into tears because you hate the thought of going to a job you despise. Find something you love to do then find a way to make a living out of it. That’s what I did and it’s one of the few things in my life that is still regret free.

Jobs lead to money and if you don’t listen to anything else, PLEASE listen to this. Be careful, careful, careful about money. No, money is not the most important thing in the world – far from it – but good money management can make your life go a lot easier. The worst thing you can do is come out of college thousands of dollars in debt with student loans AND credit cards! Avoid credit cards like the plague. Debt is like crack cocaine, it feels so good to buy what you want, but sooner or later, you have to pay. Now, having said all that, don’t hoard money either. Once you have a good roof over your head and the light bill and such are paid, don’t be afraid to live a little. People who hoard up money are just keeping score and money is a very empty way to keep score. Remember this – use things and love people; don’t use people and love things.

Finally, keep one thing in the back of your mind as you go “This too will pass away.” It’s true of everything. If you are insanely happy at the moment, don’t get too caught up in it because it WILL pass away. No one can stay on the mountain top forever. At the same time, though, if you are in a dark period of life and it seems like the sun will never shine again, this too will pass away. No one stays in the valley forever, it just seems like a long time sometimes.

So, Sweetie, I hope you can find a nugget or two in the ramblings of an old man who’s seen a bit too much and avoid some pitfalls along the way. Life is a wonderful thing, enjoy it as much as you can, but always remember – this is the journey, not the destination. Enjoy your Sweet 16, _____, and may you have many, many more!

With fond affection,

Mr. S. Wham

]]> http://grocerystorefeet.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/to-a-young-person-turning-16/feed/ 1 G. S. Feet http://grocerystorefeet.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/on-presidents/ http://grocerystorefeet.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/on-presidents/#comments Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:03:43 +0000 G. S. Feet http://grocerystorefeet.wordpress.com/?p=338 ]]>

Most anyone who knows me knows that I am more or less apolitical. I hate political debates because they are always fraught with hypocrisy. I maintain that it is nearly impossible to be fervent about any political issue without lapsing into some sort of rank hypocrisy. Just for instance, one party screams at the top of their lungs that abortion must be stopped no matter what! The same party doesn’t tend to do very much for those would be aborted babies once they get here, thus often dooming them to a life of abuse and poverty. Am I pro-Choice then? No. I’m not pro-Life either because this world isn’t black ink on white paper. Another political party wants to raise taxes astronomically. What’s the hypocrisy in that? Most politicians within the Beltway are rich. Taxes don’t hurt rich people as much as they hurt poor people simply because rich people have more money to pay taxes with. Oh, and don’t bother trying to explain the tax code to me and how it’s a sliding scale because unless you are a tax attorney with the IRS, you don’t know a bit more than I do.

Now, I pointed all that out to say this. People around here have been as riled up as sore tailed cats in a room full of rocking chairs about President Obama’s speech to students. “He’s trying to indoctrinate our children!” is one battlecry I heard a lot this weekend. Well, if you think his speech is aimed at indoctrination, you either didn’t read the speech I read OR you have the reading comprehension level of a botfly or a politician. The fact is, President Obama’s speech was inspiring and nonpartisan. The reason behind the attacks, dismay and handwringing is the fact that a certain segment of people in this country will hate ANYTHING President Obama does. He could hand out gold bars to every man, woman, and child in America and people would still castigate him. I have even heard some people, who I feel are usually rational, state that they believe President Obama is the Antichrist. It was the same with President Bush. In the minds of a certain segment of the population, George W. Bush was the Antichrist and nothing he could ever do would change that.

I remember when the Iraq War started and half the people in the country went ape-poop over it. President Bush’s supporters wagged their self-righteous fingers in those people’s faces and said, “He is our President and we MUST support him no matter what our PERSONAL feelings may be because the office of President deserves our respect.” Okay, so what changed back in January 2009 when President Obama was sworn in? Suddenly the office of President no longer deserves respect because “your man” isn’t occupying the Oval Office? I’m sorry, but that is the rankest, most odious brand of hypocrisy of all. It reeks of doublespeak and insincerity.

I believe every man (and eventually woman) who occupies the Oval Office leaves behind something positive of note . . . with the possible exception of Millard Filmore. For example, people have vilified President Nixon for thirty years now because of Watergate and quite rightly so, BUT he did open up China to the US again and he did go a long way towards getting our boys home from Vietnam. Others have blasted President Carter for being a “failed Presidency” but he brokered a peace between Israel and Egypt that has held to this day. What it comes down to is trying. Every President has TRIED to make this country better acting on the light that he (for now) possessed. I am a student of history and I defy anyone anywhere to point out ONE, just ONE of the men who have held the office of POTUS who came into the office with the agenda of making our country worse.

I would not have the job of POTUS if someone held a gun to my head. How would you like to get up in the morning knowing that around 40 to 60% of the people in the country HATE YOUR GUTS at any given moment? Not me. I’ve liked all the Presidents that have been in office since I was old enough to understand who the President was. I haven’t always agreed with everything they did, but I respected the fact that they were at least trying and in the end, that’s all any of us can do. If the heads of the DNC and the RNC would be honest, if Jesus Christ Himself came back to Earth and ran for President as a Republican, the Democrats would sling as much mud on Him as they could to try to defeat Him, and if He ran on the Democratic ticket, the Republican Convention would be dead in after Him as well. You simply cannot please everyone or even a majority and it is complete folly for a man with the responsibility of the President to even try.

President Obama is going to do the best he can do for as long as he is in office just like President Bush, Clinton, Bush I, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, et al tried to do when they were on the hot seat. He will make huge mistakes. He may or may not make impressive gains, but he will TRY. That’s one thing his speech was about — TRYING YOUR BEST. If he’s willing to try so hard in the face of such hatred by some and apathy by others, the least we can do is give him the benefit of the doubt, and you know what? If John McCain had won, I’d say the same thing.

Barak Obama is my President and he deserves my support. If you, for whatever reason, refuse to support the man, you are duty bound as an American to support the office.

Unless you want to be a dirty footed hypocrite.

Well, well, well . . . this little blog has turned a year old! Who’d ‘a thunk it? One year on a journey with all you out there in the blogosphere. Oh my, what a year it’s been as well. When I started Grocery Store Feet one year ago today, I was a librarian at a middle school and I naively thought I had something to say!

Well, I’m not a librarian anymore . . . or I guess I’m a librarian still, I’m just a librarian without a library (except of course my own rather extensive personal library) for now. I have hope, though. Most districts around here will record the mystical “ten day counts” tomorrow and that’s often been a source for new openings. I also have my eye on a job in a neighboring county that is VERY similar to the job I was just cut from . . . I’ve sent my resume — three times — so we’ll just see.

I would like to thank all of you who have taken the time to stop by and read. I’ve grown rather fond of several of you (I’m looking at you TeacherNinja and you too Buffy “Peaches” Hamilton )

I also appreciate Doug and Cathy for reminding me to keep writing even when I don’t feel like it. I don’t know if this little blog would have lasted a year without you two. I also appreciate Scott McLeod who, even though he doesn’t drop by much, was invaluable giving advice and ideas on how to keep my quite ample bacon out of the fire. I just wish it’d have worked a little better, LOL.

Now if I got to mentioning people, I know I’ll miss somebody, so please don’t get hurt feelings. If you took time out of you busy day to read something I wrote, then I appreciate you more than you know! Especially in these past several depressing weeks.

So, love y’all bunches and don’t forget to wash your feet!