News to Make You Happy!

 

Take a break now from all of the bad news you hear on TV. Here is some good news:

 

—This morning the sun came up! The moon stayed on course. 330 million Americans were not murdered or hit by a car. No atomic bomb was detonated anywhere on the planet. Life is good!

 

—A wonderful park is developing nicely in South Boston’s Riverdale section, which is prone to flooding. It includes a new boat ramp.

 

—About 96% of all of the world’s children make it to adulthood now, according to the New York Times. For centuries, only half of survived. And the share of the world’s people living in extreme poverty has plunged from 38% in 1990 to about 8% now.

 

—Ernie’s restaurant, which closed during the pandemic, is going to come back in the form of a food trailer. And, could a Spanish tapas restaurant be in the future for downtown?

 

—A 12-year-old boy in Michigan took the wheel of his school bus after the driver became unconscious. As he drove the bus to the shoulder, the seventh grader was credited with keeping the 60 children safe from injury.

 

—Evan Snead, who grew up as a child of the Prizery, is coming back from Orlando to be the prince in the August show, The Little Mermaid. Welcome home, Evan!

 

—The Diamond Hill Cemetery, dedicated last year, has been added to the African-American HeritageTrail. Teenage members of Young Life recently planted flowers and fixed up the trails going to Berry Hill resort.

 

—A class has been added and attendance doubled since Rona Collins began teaching the YMCA Silver Sneakers fitness class in September. Good going, Rona!

 

—The  Healthy Harvest Community Garden in Halifax grows and distribute produce for those who otherwise may not have access to affordable, nutritious food. No pesticides are used on the plants. Says Carol Nelson: “We teach our interns and volunteers about good bugs and bad bugs.  They learn to spot pests and pick them off to squish, stomp on or drop into a bucket of soapy water.”

 

—The new Caesars Virginia temporary casino in Danville took in $12 million in revenue in its first 15 days. Other businesses are benefiting. Two sets of guests at our bed & breakfast came to gamble and  ate at South Boston restaurants.

 

—Halifax County’s own Andrew Abbott is tearing up the National League with his first few games as a pitcher for  Cincinnati. Yesterday he struck out 10 batters. Go Andrew!

 

—I am taking a brief summer break from this column. See you soon!

 

Editor’s Note: In real life, the author is not always as upbeat and cheerful as his article implies!

Hope I don’t put you to sleep

 

Yes, I am a napper. I will admit it. A half-hour snooze in mid-afternoon works wonders. My wife used to complain until she saw how much my mood improved. Now she suggests, “Why don’t you take a nap?”

 

I napped before I retired too. On my last job I inherited a sofa somehow. It was wonderful! I would close the door and drift off after lunch. I considered phone calls a rude intrusion. You have a scoop for me? Call me later! 

 

When a higher-ranking editor retired, my boss wanted me to take his office. It was very nice, but there was no room fore a sofa. No way, I’m not moving there! I didn’t say why.

 

People must have known I was sleeping. After I retired, I asked someone about it. “Oh, yes,” she said, “and when you were on vacation, the secretary would sleep in there.” What? On my sofa? Without my permission? Not OK! Once, when I arrived for work,  I found a retired executive with dementia sleeping on my sofa. He sheepishly left as I cruelly glared at him. Got work to do!

 

Even without a sofa, I had intruders on another job, at U.S. News & World Report. A well-respected writer did not seem to have a home address. When his own office got too cluttered for him he would spend the night on the floor in others. When I found an odd smell and cigarette butts on the floor, I knew it was him. I think I left him a note about it. My office is my castle!

 

Sometimes when I can’t get to sleep, I reflect on some of my favorite naps: After my Sunday morning paper route, I would climb back in bed at 7 a.m. and snooze deeply for another hour or two. Another great place was the backyard lounge chair at my mother’s house in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

 

I also think of the time I was driving in a morning snowstorm in the Black Hills of South Dakota with a U-Haul trailer. When I got stuck on the ice, I got out and I fell on my back and broke a rib. I drove to an old small inn at the town of Custer for two hours of wonderful sleep. When the snow stopped I was still in pain but felt refreshed and drove on.

 

And now, excuse me, I think I’ll…Zzzzzz.

Clarksville’s Aging Thespians

          

 

I was blown away at my first meeting last year of the Double Nickel   Players in Clarksville.

         The over-55 club members weren’t talking about selling  tickets to their murder mystery dinner. No, they were trying to keep each other from buying too many. They didn’t want to disappoint others who wanted to come.

         What? In 10 years of working with choruses and theaters in Washington and South Boston, I had never heard of such a thing. I can’t ever remember having a full house. Sometimes we would give tickets away to fill seats. 

The Double Nickel mystery shows, Oct. 20, 21 and 22 this year, are so popular that a third one was added last year. There was a race for tickets as soon as the live box office opened a few weeks before showtime. What is this? A Taylor Swift concert?

I had performed in a reader’s theater show with the group in 2012, when it first started, but I hadn’t returned until 2022. For its annual Sunday Funnies show last month, the group had gone big time with mics for actors, costumes and even a TV monitor of the show in the dressing room. I chose to play and sing music because I had realized by 2019 I could no longer remember the lines.

I guess I wasn’t the only one, but these actors drilled hard to put on an impressive show at the Clarksville Fine Arts Center on May 21. There was a modern version of the Three Little Pigs and a couples therapy  session where the husband seems to be growing rabbit ears. The show, directed by Leslie Pipan, also featured a traffic cop trying to arrest a woman who had been drinking. Noteworthy was the skit, “It’s Hell to Grow Old” in which three men with canes couldn’t hear or remember anything, including their wives. I wonder if they were playing themselves (Just kidding, guys!). And jokes about passing gas? I thought we left those behind in the third grade.

If you are interested in Double Nickel, send a message  to nancyedbarden@gmail.com.

         I have already written a song to perform next year. (Billy Joel, please don’t steal it!)

 

Song: Get Rid of Those Cliches

 

As an editor and writer, 

This is something I must say

Just pull out all the stops

And don’t write another cliché

 

You’re pushing the envelope.

I’m not pulling your leg

These dreadful, overworked  phrases

Should be avoided like the plague.

 

You say it’s raining cats and dogs

Or don’t cry over spilled milk.

It makes me scream bloody murder

I can’t hang around with your ilk.

 

So grab the bull by the horns,

Start thinking outside the box.

Remove these wicked words

Or I’ll call the cliché cops!

 

-0-

 

What? Grandparents’ Day at school? I had been to a lot of back to school days, but grandparents’ day?

 

I didn’t know what to expect at Choate boarding school  in Wallingford, Conn., which a grandchild was attending. Walking into first-period English, I planned on being bored. Are they going to analyze Shakespeare or Chaucer? Or maybe teach writing? I should be teaching the class!

 

Then the teacher, who looked about the same age as the students, explained  the “hero’s journey” method of writing.  This is the template for so many action stories ranging from Homer to Star Wars to Harry Potter to Spiderman.

 

I had never heard of this before. I was so revved by this revelation. So if you have seen one hero story you have seen them all?

 

Excited, I brought this up with my literary friends. I got reactions like “Where have you been?” “This has been well known for decades.” Oops. I don’t care. I have always written nonfiction. I learned something new. New to me, anyway.

I Just Couldn’t Give Up My Records

 

When I was growing up, my finest possessions were records. First the 78s with Guy Mitchell, Frankie Laine, Rosemary Clooney—“C’Mon a My House,” And then the 45s with the late ‘50s hits of Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Bill Haley and the Comets.

 

But the 12-inch, 33s became my true treasures. The Columbia Record Club brought me My Fair Lady, Frank Sinatra and my first jazz albums.

 

I couldn’t give them up in 1963 when I drove across country from San Francisco to my new job in Dover, Del. About 200 of them were piled in the backseat and weighed my 1956 Ford  down. I needed new tires when I got to Wells, Nev. And new shock absorbers in Salt Lake City. If I were in a floating balloon, I would have tossed out bags of sand. But not my records!  It’s a wonder I ever made it.

 

I added to my record collection over time, and I didn’t get rid of them as CDs took hold. Years later, I began to wonder if they were valuable. The idea was strengthened when I took Pickett’s uncle’s 1940s 78 records from Cluster Springs to a Richmond dealer.

 

He looked them over, didn’t find anything special but agreed to take the whole stack of 200 records for $200. He said the real demand was for jazz records of the 1950s.

 

Really? I had a ton of them in Washington. I brought about 30 that I was willing to spare and started to count the money in my head. Dave Brubeck, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis. What gems I had! But the dealer didn’t like all the scratches in these records and the wear and tear in trips across country.

 

“Wait, what’s this?” He said. It was a pink Cal Tjader record, with Mongo Santamaria, and Vince Guaraldi, who later wrote the “Peanuts” soundtracks. As he opened the sleeve he liked the unusual pink color. Then he took his finger, pointed to a hole in the record and stared at me.

 

“Oh, that was from playing darts in our rec room. I wasn’t very good at it.” Without saying another word, I packed the records  all up and took them home.

 

So I kept the records but I didn’t play them at all in the 2000s because all the new music was on CDs and itunes and I didn’t fix the broken LP player. Finally, when we downsized to a new apartment, I gave them all away to the Goodwill.

 

Then vinyl made a comeback. Everybody wanted vinyl again. My timing was terrible.

 

That’s OK. I can get everything on YouTube now anyway!