For MLK Day: "Beloved" by Toni Morrison, annotated

Read this book and be grateful if you believe in forgiveness
and the potential for Beloved Community. 

To commemorate Martin Luther King Day, I'm pleased to post my annotation of the book Beloved, by Toni Morrison:  

Beloved by Toni Morrison is a novel set in Cincinnati the immediate years following the civil war, centering on a former slave, Sethe, and her family. “Family,” defined by slavery standards as family didn’t exist for slaves; would-be loved ones were bought, sold, rented, burned, hanged, or otherwise lost. Sethe’s family was her mother-in-law, her daughter, her new lover who was an old co-slave (for total lack of a better word), her two runaway sons, her vanished husband and her ghost daughter, Beloved, who forms the center of the plot line. The book demonstrates why it was nearly impossible for a slave to form bonds of love, and the reader understands how love could be best shown through infanticide. Yes, read that last sentence again slowly. Love through infanticide. I won't give away the spoiler, the method.

I wanted to read this book for two reasons. First to further my quest to read the classics. In 2006 The New York Times Book Review deemed this book as “the single best work of American fiction in the past 25 years.” The original NYT review was written in 1987 by Margeret Atwood who wrote this about Toni Morrison: “If there were any doubts about her stature as a pre-eminent American novelist, of her own or any other generation, Beloved will put them to rest. In three words or less, it's a hair-raiser.”

What would I give to find a nonfiction story like this to write (and I have to believe they exist). Or better yet, I only wish there were no nonfiction stories like this. This is a story of our American heritage and it’s really hard to read. Just as Sethe and her lover, Paul D., wanted to “unremember” their horrific past—perhaps they had most severe cases of post traumatic stress—so do we as a country. Perhaps this book could help serve a national truth and reconciliation effort, to tell stories of our slave history and collectively heal. Idealism.

The second reason I wanted to read this is to see how Toni Morrison writes the supernatural. (My writing and research interests include writing nonfiction supernatural.) Morrison writes the narrative like a conch shell—circling wide with big open holes in the story and rotating the prose inwards, winding towards a tight ball of tension and providing details to the circumstances of Beloved’s past and present. Slavery is horrible, yet is also just a word that cannot in itself evoke the complexities of what it did to people, white and black, and to our society. Morrison puts flesh and bones to slavery; not only to its enormous injustices, but also to its tragic nuances. The inwardly spiraling accounts of chronic and severe abuse suffered by all of the characters seem to beg for a supernatural telling as the haunting seems almost as expected as killing your own baby in order to save it. It seemed a person enslaved lived constantly on the border of life and death, and so to accept a ghost into your household, to accept existence as a straddling of the present world and the next, wouldn’t be out of the ordinary.

The book opens with the supernatural: “124 was spiteful. Full of baby’s venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims” (3). Yes, indeed, Morrison is writing about ghosts of the poltergeist-type, including incidents such as “a mirror shattered” and “two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake” (3). Yet the way Morrison writes the supernatural, it could also be referring to the super traumatic. Would not anyone who murdered their own child be haunted, and thus negatively influence everyone around them?

As part of the inward spiraling of the narrative, Morrison tells the story through different characters in their own voice, in a non-linear fashion. The disjointed style of prose emulates the jarring uncertainties faced by its characters, yet it all works together to tell a thick, multi-layered story of attempting to love in a nightmare.

With love, T

Teenager Economics

This is a random RHS cheerleader pic I found on google images.
But I'm pretty sure my favorite cheerleader is the girl in the back right.
Are they adorable or what? xoxoxo

I just spent $5 to get into a Roosevelt High School basketball game to deliver $15 to my daughter who has a $30 public library bill due to go to a collection agency soon. I should have been able to get into the game with my $80 season pass, but we lost it, and so I've chalked that up to putting us into major donor status with the RHS booster club. For whom I recently volunteered in the RHS concession stand. I thought it was cool that I mastered the popcorn machine until the 10-year-old son of another mother mastered it better than me. I paid $5 to get into that game too, just so I could report to concession stand duty and get one-upped by a 5th grader. I kept telling myself that working consessions was an innovative way to network. "So where do you work?" I kept asking other mothers as we sold skittles and walking tacos. A question which experience tells me inevitably leads to a conversation on the topic of rampant job dissatisfaction. Irrelevant to this post, but just saying.

Anyway...

It paid off. I mean, the networking. Not so much professionally, but from a parental standpoint. Because my teenage daughter keeps wanting to hang out with her friends instead of stay home with us. Even on Friday nights! It's uncomfortable, because you always want your babies close to you. But at least I've met some of her friends and some of their mothers, and so it helps.

There was a lot of energy tonight at the RHS gym. The varsity boys were just starting up and the pep band finally got showed up tonight. My goodness, this school has a reputation for it's music and vocal arts program and there's been no dang pep band! So it was great to hear them tonight although they don't seem to be your usual pep band, playing "Louie Louie" and assorted Beatles songs. (I love pep band songs. I keep harassing my girl that the cheerleaders need to come up with little dances to go with the songs. Not that  I have strong feelings about it.) The RHS pep band seems to feature bass and electric guitars so you can't easily tell if it's a pep band or a recording. Tonight they played, "Hell's Bells." If that's not a nightmare song from my high school years, but that's another story. ACDC songs seem to be big among RHS varsity sports. They liked to play "Back in Black" during the football game warm ups. It felt so been-there-done-that to me, but the kids thought it was really cool, including my 7th grader. I'm just a lowly parent.

So tonight, after the $5 admission fee I realized there was nowhere for this parent to sit -- and I kind of wanted to stay for a while because there was a lot of energy in that gym, I mean, the whole RHS student section was full of students wearing onesie pajamas. Yes, you read me right. An entire bleacher section of grown children in adult-sized, onesie pajamas standing up in full chant of hell's bells. It's called school spirit, people. And I was feeling it too, but since there was no where to sit, I did my one important thing and then returned home.

My one important thing: I marched right up to the cheerleader section, found my favorite girl, pulled her aside, gave her the money, and reminded her that I had my cell phone with me at all times and that she could call me whenever she wanted to. No matter what.

That's all.

How much did all that cost?

Thanks for coming to the Charmer blog. I wish you all a lovely weekend.

With love, T

My nightmare, their nightmare

"...motherhood is a series of emergencies..." so writes Debra Monroe in her memoir, On the Outskirts of Normal. In a chapter called "A History of Fear" she writes about all the ways her newly adopted baby could be mortally hurt, due to her imagined maternal inadequacy.

You start loosing your child the very minute you get one. Because every time your child learns something, the child moves further away from dependence on you. The fact that Amanda can now occasionally find transportation with friends is yet another step on that slippery slope of our separation. We still drive her to most places, but sometimes she doesn't need us. (It's probably more accurate to say that her need for us changes.)

"Mom, Katie will take me to the game tonight," she told me earlier today. The game was at East High School. Amanda was cheering for the Roosevelt High School varsity boys basketball team, the away team. (Even though Des Moines'ers know that the two giant-sized schools are separated by just a few miles of  I-235.)

Fine. The plan sounded good to me. She'd go with a friend, and I'd arrive by second quarter, watch her cheer, then bring her back home.

But then something happened that scared me. Felt like one of those emergencies you dread. A flash of nightmare.

I was in the kitchen preparing pizza toppings for Bob, thinking I'd have his pizza ready to bake before I left for Amanda's game. (He'd taken Aidan to his basketball practice, where, damn, that coach had Aidan scrimmaging on the "skins" team, I found out later. My son is not a "skins" kind of kid. Had I been there, I would have died inside, or at least embarrassed a couple people, especially Aidan, by talking with the coach.)

What time did Amanda's game start? I forgot. I texted her: "What time does your game start?" I continued chopping onions and slicing garlic.

Amanda texted me back. Except it wasn't Amanda. The text said (exact words), "Your fucking kid lost her phone."

My mind went wild. I imagined Amanda kidnapped. I let her ride with a friend to the basketball game and now she is kidnapped. She's too young to be alone, she's so vulnerable, there's so many predators out  there. Of course predators are going to stalk teenage girls at a high school basketball game. A predator has her. They will use her phone to torment me. Wait a minute, calm down. They didn't say you lost your kid, they said your kid lost her phone. Big difference. For whatever reason, some creepy person had my daughter's phone and was texting me. Had I been cyber bullied? Is this what high-schoolers do to each other regularly?

I came so close to texting back my own version of cyber bullying. Fortunately, even in my state of panic, I held it together enough to realize that I was totally at my bully's mercy. Totally. There was nothing I could do but to be polite. Courtesy was my one and only chance.

And so I texted back: "Will u pls return it?" And then I fumbled around with the T-Mobile 800# and disconnected the service, imagining all the apps and ring tones my texter was downloading. Still, it occurred to me that even if my bully texter was willing to oblige my plea, I'd cut off the service before we could further communicate. There was no way to make arrangements to return the phone.

No  longer in the mood to finish making Bob's pizza, I got in the car and headed over to East High. I was sure that when I got there I'd see Amanda decked out in blue and white with the silver poms, cheering with the rest of the team. But what if I didn't? What if I got there and she was the missing cheerleader? What if there were five girls bopping around the sidelines instead of six?

I called Bob to tell him about the creepy text. He was weirded out too. "Maybe you should just go right over there," he suggested. I already was on the road. He asked that I call him when I saw her, when I could verify with my own eyes that it was her phone, and not her, that was stolen.

If a child falls in the woods by herself, does the parent hear? Children shouldn't be alone in the woods, but sadly, as they grow older, it's inevitable. Or maybe more sadly, there are far too few chances for children to play freely and safely in the woods. I always like the times when we're all home together, just doing nothing but being together. It seems so secure.

I got to East High, parked the car, winded my way through the sidewalk, ramps, hallways, and stairways to the gym full of screaming, teaming kids. I'd never before been in a high school where the public gathering space felt situated in the bowels of the building. The basketball court and its environs seemed to enjoy its posture of strength, like an enormously sturdy bomb shelter. I found the visitors' section. Looked for the cheerleaders. Counted them, 1,2,3,4,5...6. All accounted for. Amanda was there as if nothing had happened. She couldn't see me as I was just a spec of a bug in the massive section of fans, parents, and students, but I could see her. Her cheer smile beamed all across the auditorium. Her pony tail bounced as though her lost or stolen cell phone was a figment of my thinking. I called Bob to let him know that I could see Amanda with my own eyes.

Maybe she had her phone after all. Maybe her friends were just fooling around with it. That would be awesome, I thought. If this was true I wouldn't even care if her friends dropped me an f-bomb. I just wanted the phone back.

During halftime, Amanda confirmed with me -- no cell phone. She had it one moment, and not the next. It simply disappeared. At this point, knowing that indeed she wasn't kidnapped in the woods, my concern turned away from predators and turned towards lost property. I considered that now we were two for two with lost kid phones. (Aidan had an earlier mishap.) And even Amanda's phone, or I should say ex-phone, was a Craig's list special because she'd lost her original phone.

How can regular folk like us keep up with children's cell phones?

But my laments were minor compared to other parents' because one of the Roosevelt basketball team members got terribly injured. He was pushed somehow into diving position, headfirst to the floor. Landed smack on his temple and just laid there like a human puddle. I saw it happen and it was truly horrifying. The game was stopped for a half hour to wait for the paramedics. A half hour with a gym full of RHS and East High kids, no game, no music, no cheers, and only one fistfight in the bleachers. The police broke it up pretty handily.

The old gym held us all in check. It hadn't yet reached the ranks of modernization, still ordering the people with its original built-in bleachers, not the kind that nimbly tuck back. The gym roared its own brute strength, simply with the weight of its massive cement walls and levels. The space reminded me of a ginormous cavern you'd discover deep inside a cave. Were we actually underground? I looked for fire escapes. Painted lettering boldly proclaimed "East Side Scarlets." Scarlets was an odd mascot name, I thought. I'd never heard of that before. Red was the main accent color.

Officials scrubbed blood off the floor where the player had crashed his head, while we all waited for the paramedics to arrive. It was the twilight zone.

Many friends had told me that East High has the most robust alumni association of any high school in the U.S., perhaps in the world. The gym was the very same gym that has held all those thousands of former students. I wondered if anyone believed the place was haunted.
It was troubling that officials moved the injured player to a chair instead of stabilizing his head and neck, keeping him warm, and talking to him. The boy was catatonic as he rose and walked to the bench. I hate to say, but I think moving him like that was a bad, bad mistake on the part of the officials. The mistake was made with the scarlet gym and all of us watching. When the paramedics came, they attached a neck brace and wheeled him out  flat on a gurney. Everyone stood and clapped. The pointless remaining six minutes of the game commenced.

I'm too old for these 15 hour days. I'm too exhausted for these "motherhood emergencies" although I'm told they never go away. Ever.

The gamed ended in a Roosevelt win (yay?) and the gym erupted into the frenzy of everyone leaving all at the same time. I always just stay put and let my cheerleader find me. Through the commotion I hear an announcement on the loud speaker. "Amanda Speirs, please report to the score desk." Did I hear that right? Did they say my daughter's name? "Amanda Speirs, please report to the score desk." I look down from the bleachers and sure enough, there's Amanda claiming her phone. Evidently, my bully texter had turned it in.

All the way home we tried to figure out how my bully texter knew the phone belonged to "Amanda Speirs." Her name wasn't anywhere. The only explanation we have is that it was someone who knows Amanda and knowingly took it, which is another layer of creepiness. Yet, I want to give a small shout out to my bully texter: thank you for changing your mind. And leave my daughter alone.

How will I ever let this girl go to college?

Thanks for coming over to the Charmer blog.

With love, T

Liver Coincidence

synchronicity (ˌsɪnkrəˈnɪsɪtɪ)

— n

an apparently meaningful coincidence in time of two or more
similar or identical events  that are causally unrelated

Do you believe in synchronicity? It's basically a fancy word for spiritual coincidence. Tonight I was at a nice little church-related Christmas party. Ok, I laughed so hard my throat hurt, so don't think this a quaint church event. My church is a lot of things, but quaint isn't one of them. I like quaint, don't get me wrong, it's just not us. That's a digression.

Anyway, I met someone who a.) spent a career researching transplant science, b.) engaged in initial conversations about the ethics of transplant, and c.) witnessed the first liver transplant ever.

I thought that was pretty amazing since I am a.) fascinated with organ transplant, b.) writing a book about liver failure and b.) planning to explore liver transplant in my writing.

If the person I am referring to happens to read this dispatch, no pressure, but I think this is really cool and I thank you.

With love, T

The Education of Terri Dee Mork Speirs

Women do 2/3 of the world's work but receive only 10% of the world's income.

Women's education is the most powerful predictor of lower birth rates.

Of 1.2 billion people living in poverty worldwide, 70% are women.

Women own around only 1% of the world's land.

Women are 2/3 of the 1 billion+ illiterate adults who have no access to basic education.
 
And yet there is one lucky woman, lucky beyond words, who just might walk away in a few weeks with a Master of Fine Arts Degree. Thanks to willing references, a scholarship from the Women of the ELCA, a student loan, an understanding family, and the good fortune of being born in a time and place whereby she could imagine school in the realm of her reality.

And thanks to her desire to go west. That is the stupider part of the story. Because the only reason she wanted to go west was so to escape the pain she felt when she lost her eastern-bound job. As if going 1,000 miles in the other direction would make her feel better. It didn't. But thinking about it did.
 
She was so bound and determined to go to Antioch University in Los Angeles that she applied only to that one MFA program. There was no back-up plan. When she didn't get in, she agreed to be put on the waiting list. When she still didn't get in, she applied a second time. When she still didn't get in, she agreed to again be put on the waiting list. And when she finally got in, it was like Antioch had found her.
 
She was so focused on going west that she hadn't even checked out the fact that Antioch shared her value of social justice. She hadn't checked out its theories on education. During her first writing residency, she didn't know until halfway through the week that half of the instructors were actually students. It turned out to be a place where students and teachers learned together, which, coincidentally happened to be her philosophy of education. There was no hierarchy of the smarter people. She hadn't known that human decency would be valued above all. Which, as happenstance would have it, also matched her way of thinking.

When Antioch found her she didn't know that her cousin-in-law lived three miles from campus, had a spare house, an extra car, another bicycle, and boundless hospitality, thus saving her approximately $7,500 in hotel expenses and gaining her exactly three additional family members for the rest of her life. Not to mention hiking in the mountains and biking on the beach.

She didn't know that writers don't simply get exiled. They write about exile. They don't simply feel deceit, heartbreak, love, and truth. They seek to understand it. Baltimore had spit her out. Los Angeles scooped her up. Des Moines held her tight while she wrestled these real and imaginary demons and angels, for some dumb reason manifested in terms of miles and horizons. She learned that her exile and heartbreak were far less serious than others'.

Now, two years later, she feels all melancholy about it all. About what she put her family through to make this work. About how they happily obliged. About how her husband worked double overtime so she could write. About her kids who didn't get tucked in for about 50 nights. About her student loan and how it will be paid. About the things she's learned and the people she's met. About the fact that Mona Simpson keeps popping up on her Facebook as "someone she probably knows." She doesn't, but apparently nine of her Facebook friends do. She's now two degrees separated through nine lives to this famous writer, you know, not to name drop, but Steve Jobs' sister. About the fact that her mentor, Hope Edelman, is a multiple New York Times bestselling author and one of the most insightful teachers she's ever had. Yes, she now shamelessly name drops.

But mostly, she's infinitely grateful.

And now, she will go back to work on her senior seminar and reading prep, lest this all be a dream that goes puff into the night.

With love, T

Salon Expectations

Queen Noor

Tomorrow is salon day.

I was reminded of my high expectations when I mentioned the appointment to my 12-year-old son, Aidan.

We were departing his basketball practicee whereby the coach had them playing shirts and skins. (I texted Bob to ask if it's appropriate for boys to play shirts and skins because I thought it was weird.)

"Tomorrow you will have a new mother," I said, after settling the fact that the coach gave the boys a choice whether to be shirts or skins and Aidan had chosen to be on the fully clothed team.

"Oh, what happened to the queen?" he said.

"Huh?" I was confused. Was the tween boy being a smart aleck by implying that my long needed salon appointment was making me an diva mother? Was he making fun of me? Should I cancel the appointment?

"No, remember your last hair-do was that queen," he said, sincerely. He wasn't being a smart mouth, he just had a really good memory. He was right. Last time I went to the salon I took a picture of Queen Noor's hair. Straight the shoulder, layered on top. I was confident that my hair magician could transform me into the former first lady of Jordan whose husband died in spite of long stints at the Mayo Clinic, purple Royal Jordanian Airliner parked at the Rochester, Minnesota, airport for weeks and months. Noor means "light" in Arabic.

"Oh yeah, you're right," I conceded. "I did go for for the queen. I think this time I'll go for the Diane Keaton." A whispy, whimsical bob. You may remember her as the bad parallel parker in "Annie Hall." Bob and I still laugh at the line when she parks in Manhattan and her date, Woody Allen says, That's OK I'll just walk to the curb from here. Bob and I actually say that to each other fairly often, when one or the other of us parallel parks.

"Oh, what's that hair like?" Aidan said.

"I'll show you a picture," I reassured him. I got the feeling that he was afraid that I might actually do something really outlandish.

You see, lately, I've been sporting the recession hair-do. Long, thick, stringy, often pulled into a severe bun. That's when you avoid the cuts and costs of the salon and do the best you can with your cheap shampoo and hot flat iron. If you're lucky, your natural color blends with the color of gray, until your daughter one day discovers your secret.

"MOM! Holy cow, you've got a ton of gray hair!" my Zena-like, statuesque 15-year-old daughter, Amanda, informed me the other day when she hazarded to lift my hair and look underneath. But that's another story. Back to my salon appointment for tomorrow. . .

So anyway, my Queen Noor do worked fairly well for a long time. A loooooong time. I had thought that my next plan would be the Talia Balsam, otherwise known as George Clooney's ex-wife, look. One elegant length, straight the the chin. That's before my hair turned into the recession do, and to be honest, I think it has transformed kinda Michelle Bachmanish. Or maybe it's the serial killer mother eyes. My daughter, who happens to be a varsity cheerleader, says that I tend to evoke serial killer mother in pictures. Sadly, she's right. For some reason when I'm in a picture, I try to present a happy smile and I end up looking menacing, in a middle class kind of way. I get those crazy Michelle Bachman eyes. I'm not crying in my soup about it, I'm just saying all the more reason for a salon appointment.

Diane Keaton

Goodbye recession hair. Goodbye liquid assets for this pay period. Hello high expectations.

I wish my salon medicine woman all the best. You're invited to do the same.

Bob hasn't texted me back yet regarding the shirts and skins dilemma. And just in case you're wondering, this blog post is actually a cleverly disguised yet elaborate procrastination tactic to avoid writing my cumulative annotated bibliography due soon and very soon.

Thanks much for coming over! Hair prayers welcome.

With love, T

Notes from three women

She told me she needed to interview someone for her community college class on nonprofit organizations. And so we agreed to meet in my office, where I do communications for a small nonprofit that runs a network of 12 food pantries. She was skinny, her voice was gravely, and her face was potholed as if she'd smoked cigarettes since she was a baby. Her hair was overly blond and kinda stringy yet she was well presented with a long skirt and pretty top. I had to listen hard to understand her words because she didn't enunciate like I'm used to; it was almost like hearing a heavy accent, the accent one talks when they've lived hard. I thought stupid, patronizing thoughts like how great it was that people like her could go to community college. She got right to her assignment, pulled out her notebook, and asked me questions.

"What's your mission?" she asked. I answered.

"Who do you serve?" she asked. I answered.

"Where do you get funding?" she asked. I answered.

And on with all the typical nonprofit questions, until she got to this question: "Do you have interns?" Yes, I answered. Not a lot but sometimes, I said. Why don't you send me your resume and tell me about your interests, I said.

And that's when the conversation shifted. She put her notebook down. She put her student persona down. She put her pretenses down.

"I'll tell you what my interests are," she said, looking straight at me, talking with confidence and conviction that she didn't exude a few moments earlier. Suddenly I could understand her very well. I no longer needed to strain my ears to pick up her sentences.

"My interests are women who are doing prison time and who shouldn't be," she said. "I'm not saying all of them, but I'd say at least half the women in Mitchellville (women's facility near Des Moines) shouldn't be there. They are victims. They were defending themselves. They did drugs to escape. They shouldn't be there and there are no services for them when they get out. They get sent to a halfway house but they don't need a halfway house, they need a chance. They need to get back into the world.

"But I can't do anything until I get my education," she continued. "That's what I'm focused on now." She working towards her associates degree, then her BA in Human Services.

The interview was over. We shook hands and she walked out of my office. I'd given her my business card but after she left it occured to me that I didn't even ask her name. For all I knew, she didn't really exist and I'd simply imagined her.

*

She told me she couldn't get food until Friday. It was Wednesday. She was eyeing the leftover food from our weekly dinner at church. It's food that we put in to-go containers for anyone to take home; food that otherwise would be thrown out during clean up. She told me she didn't want to take the leftovers that others might want. I talked her into taking it. My goodness, take it please. I put the food containers into a plastic bag so it wouldn't look so conspicuous that she was taking it. I asked her to wait so I could forage the church refridgerator for more food. I grabbed a gallon of milk and disguised it in another plastic bag. I gave her my work telephone number so we could chat tomorrow about what food pantry to go to. Later I realized that I could have also given her apples and oranges from the kitchen. I could have run to the grocery store for a gift card. I could have told Bob who could have come up with assistance from a church fund to give her. I could have fixed her life right then and there. Except there are a zillion people like her, thank you very much double dip recession and a cold hearted congress. And I can't fix anyone's life. But I tried as hard as I could to not have a pathetic look of pity on my face as she told me that her cubboards have never looked this bare, that she's never been in this situation before. "I'm a giver," she said, "Not a taker." And by the way, she works full time. She works full time and has no food in the house. Explain that. "We're all givers and takers," I said.

*

She told me she's transitioning from a man. I knew that but I pretended I didn't because I didn't want to hurt her feelings. Her new name is Rebecca Grace. "I got to pick my own name," she said with the most innocent tone of voice you can imagine; a sweetness hard earned by 50 or so years of utter anquish. My Lutheran friends believe that "grace" is a special word. It means loved unconditionally. It means loved nomatter what. It means loved in spite of who we are, what we do, and where we go. We Lutherans believe that but by grace alone do any of us thrive, survive, die, or stay alive. And for those who are into counting heaven, grace is the direct line in. It certainly has to be hard to transition from Michael to Rebecca. For those who are into counting hell, living in another body might be one way to do it. You've got so many people to freak out -- the wife, the kids, the family, the friends, the coworkers. She said that people at her workplace are scared of her. "All they have to do is talk to me," Rebecca Grace said. "I'm happy to answer questions. I won't hurt anyone."

*

These are just a few of the people I've encountered recently. There are so many more, and I wish I had time to write about them all.

Thanks for coming over to the Charmer blog! Wish you all a good night.

With love, T