We never know what's going on with a person

A lot of us in the Kansas City area are bummed out today.  One of our best-loved weathermen, Don Harman, died; it's rumored it was a suicide.  He leaves behind a wife and a small daughter.  He was forty-one years old.  
The guy was always laughing and cutting up with the Fox 4 gang.  You would have taken him to be one of the happiest people in the world.  
Now I'm reading that he had been battling with depression.  Cliff asked me, "What could he have to be depressed about?"  
Of course, Cliff knows as well as I do that you don't have to have a reason to be depressed; clinical depression sometimes occurs simply because the body's chemistry is out of whack.  
I wonder if S.A.D. (wintertime depression) entered into this at all.   
I wonder how the morning crew at Fox 4 held it together today.  
I wonder how Don's family is holding up.
I wonder if perhaps the rumor I've heard is false.  (Nope, this article confirms it.)  
I wonder how many others around me are struggling with depression, perhaps even someone who seems to be the life of the party.

Don’s family has set up a memorial fund that will benefit local Kansas City charities. If you’d like to make a donation, the information is below:

Don Harman Memorial Fund
Benefiting local Kansas City Charities
c/o Tightwad Bank
1160 SE Highway 7
Tightwad, Missouri 64735

I'm not always so chipper, you know

Autumn does strange things to my mind, and today I penned these pitiful lines.

I have stopped writing songs, you know;

This cistern has run dry.

Nobody cares to hear me, and

I’ve no desire to try.

The groups that I believed in...

Would’ve bet my life upon,

Don’t know a thing about me.

They don’t even know I’m gone.

The dollar’s been devalued, there’s not much that we can buy:

I can’t afford a doctor and I can’t afford to die.

It’s no use to think that things will ever change at all.

We thought we were so special, but pride goes before a fall.

The things that I was sure of

Just a dozen years ago

Have crumbled into nothing

So that I no longer know

Which crooked politicians

I should even try to trust.

Their promises have crumbled,

Lying empty in the dust.

Our battles end in failure,

Yet we feel we have to fight

Lest enemies should bomb us

While we lie in bed at night.

How can I write a poem?

How can I sing a song,

When everything in this old world

Has gone so awfully wrong?

.

So, if the worst happened....

If times get so bad you have to start giving up a few things, have you talked about what you'd give up?

Cliff and I discuss it often.

We'd take a lot of items off our real estate property insurance and let the chips fall where they may.

We'd get rid of DishTV as soon as possible and put up an antenna.

I'd go back to dial-up Internet. Yes, I'd hate it. But I'd do it. I won't totally give up Internet, though, unless we're homeless and starving. I'm selfish like that.

We'd stop eating out. We only do that once or twice a week, but every little bit helps.

These are only the tip of the iceberg. But we're preparing.

A coming depression?

Cliff says almost daily, "This thing will affect us before it's done." Of course in small ways, it already has.

While his job appears secure at present, we know about that old snowball effect. Who knows where it will stop?

Meesha, at Kansas City with the Russian Accent, addresses this topic, and there's quite an interesting discussion in the comment section of his entry from yesterday. If you'd like to check it out and perhaps add your opinion in comment, it's HERE.

Of course, we all know that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself".

Oh, so THAT'S it!

I've started two blog entries today that I decided weren't worth the effort after a couple of sentences and hit "cancel". (I know, I know... I should do that more often, right?).

I've really had a case of the blahs, lacking motivation to do much of anything.

So a while ago I checked in on Patrick and realized the problem. Today is the most depressing day of the year. Oh, and to top it off, there's THIS.

Now that I know it's not just me, I'll crawl back into my hole and hibernate until the Muse appears again.

Thanks a heck of a lot, Patrick. I've heard that misery loves company.

*sigh*

The doldrums

I don't normally post the same thing on this blog as I do on my AOL journal, but I got such a response to this post that I'm breaking my rule this one time:

I've noticed, as I travel around the Internet reading blogs and journals, that there are a lot of folks down-in-the-dumps lately, and I've been trying to pin down the causes.

I know this is always a ho-hum time of year: The excitement of Christmas is over; it's a long time until spring. Weather tends to keep us all housebound. So perhaps we can lay much of the blame on Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Then there are the extra expenses of the season. Many people overspent at Christmas (not me and Cliff, thank God) and are trying to make up for that now.

Heating costs are skyrocketing. If yours haven't, try heating your home with propane.

In Missouri, we have personal taxes due January 1. These have to be paid in order to license our vehicles later on. If we're late in paying, interest is added on each month.

Here in my county, real estate taxes have been re-evaluated; ours rose by about 66% this year. This has always been rolled in with our house payment, so it's spread out over the year; however, our amount in escrow was $380 shy of the amount that came out of the bank as a result of the change; I have to make that up by March 10.

Young married folks, and senior citizens on a fixed income, are struggling to make ends meet, with gasoline and grocery prices increasing steadily. I read an article online that states food costs have risen 4%; I don't know where they got that estimate, but my grocery costs have risen at least 10% in the past year or so.

Cliff and I, thankfully, took steps this past year to pay off most debts. We figured that would give us plenty of funds for traveling on the motorcycle. Now I find much of that money going for necessities.

I'm thankful that, so far, we're making ends meet. But I can't help wondering about, and praying for, all those who are caught in this squeeze.

I don't care what the politicians call it; I say we're in a recession. It's obviously going to get worse before it gets better. I'm wondering if those of us born after the 1930's are going to get a taste of what a genuine Depression is like.

I think that's why so many bloggers are in a state of the doldrums right now.

God help us.

Old pictures

Because it's family reunion time, I've been looking at old pictures my mom left behind when she passed on. Mother didn't always take the best care of old photos, but she had an abundance of them.


This is my dad's mom with all her children. Daddy, the oldest child, is on the left. Next to him stands my Aunt Gladys. I never knew this grandmother because she died giving birth to another baby that died with her, before my mom and dad met. Since Aunt Gladys was the only girl, the housekeeping fell to her in that motherless household, and she was still "chief cook and bottle-washer" when Mother and Daddy first married. These people were dirt-poor; Mother told about the time she saw Aunt Gladys remove a drowned mouse from the crock of milk sitting on the cupboard one morning, and then make gravy from the milk. When Daddy's first wife died and left him with two children, my sister's care fell to Aunt Gladys until Daddy and Mother married. So this lady had her hands full at a young age.

This is how Aunt Gladys looked last Sunday at the reunion. She's pretty much blind, and almost deaf. I believe she's 91 years old.

One of Daddy's aunts took in my brother Gerald as a newborn when his mother died giving birth to him, and refused to turn him over to my parents for several years.

Times were hard back then. My parents married in 1932 in the throes of the Great Depression, but Mother said they were so poor to begin with that they really didn't see any big difference. They supported themselves by working as hired hands for first one farmer and then another in north Missouri and southern Iowa.

I have lots of Mother's keepsakes around. Daddy's old cornhusking glove is among them. This thing was used to remove the husks (leaves) from the ear of corn, out in the field.

That sharp hook tore through the husk. You'll find an interesting article HERE explaining how difficult cornhusking was.

People sure did have it rough back then.

No Christmas spirit this year

I've battled wintertime depression ever since I became an adult; not clinical, suicidal depression, just a vague feeling of sadness. And it always seems to peak around Christmas.

In the past, I have made efforts to mask the feeling. After all, I have grandchildren. There were years when I'd tell Cliff I didn't want to bother with a tree, and he'd talk me into putting it up "just for the grandkids".

This year we haven't even discussed it. I think the straw that broke the camel's back was the cheap-o fake tree we bought last year at Hobby Lobby. When Christmas was over, I hauled the whole thing upstairs still decorated and set it back in a corner. It was the first-ever phony Christmas tree I've had, and I hate it. Besides, one of the few things I liked about Christmas was decorating the tree, or watching kids do it. If the tree stays decorated from one year to the next, what's the point?

Because Cliff and I watch our weight now, and neither of us withstand temptation well, I haven't gotten into the baking frenzy (brown sugar fudge, Mother's fruitcake, sugar cookies) that used to lift my spirits a bit and bring back happy memories of childhood.

I haven't put a single candle in a window, nor bought one gift for anyone. I've told the grandchildren they're getting cash, and not all that much of that.

I'm not sending cards. I'm not writing a Christmas letter, although I should, since this past year was a momentous one... Cliff having had a quad-heart bypass in April. I have every reason in the world to be thankful, and I ought to be glad for an excuse to tell people about his remarkable recovery.

I haven't watched my favorite movie, "It's A Wonderful Life" at all. (Maybe I should; it might help.)

It was easier to get in the spirit when the children, and then the grandchildren, were babies: it takes so little to satisfy small children. Once they get past kindergarten age, though, kids become harder to please. Everything they want is expensive, and if you deviate at all from their list of space-age toys, they don't like what you buy for them. Let's not even talk about trying to buy clothes for them.

So, I've dropped out. I'm not playing any more.

I'm not mad at Jesus. I'm not mad at anybody.

It just isn't fun any more. So there's no Christmas at my house this year.