Hootin’ Anni’s

edition #64

[click to play a short 'tribal beat' for ambiance!]

She’s ba-a-ck!!! I love humor, I love joking, I love laughter. Hope you will too. My thirteen this week comes from a wise ol’ lady named Jefé [pronounced HEH fay in Spanish slang - meaning 'boss or chief', being in this case, a "chieftress" but I like Jefé - you guessed it, I really DO have chin whiskers'] These are thirteen tried and true living experiences from the aged one with her keen perception on life——-

1] When you have a package that has “Open Here”, STOP! Opening somewhere else, in any other room, may be hazardous.

2] Never sleep with a drip! Call the plumber!

3] I suggested there be two horns on a vehicle; that talk! One would say “Get off the road you S O B!!” –The other one: “Oops, sorry!”

4] It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
[insert tribal talk "ratatooie boomagoobaloo" here]

5] The severity of the itch is proportional to inability to the reach it.

6] The early bird gets the worm. But it’s a fact that the 2nd mouse gets the cheese!!

7] I tried it already -You can’t set your laser printer on ‘stun’!!!

8] A see-through nightie is popular ’cause love ISN’T blind like people say it is!!

9] Sniffing Coke with ice cubes is not kosher!

10] Drink white wine with fish. And if you must…white grapes with sushi!!

11] Trust me…gaining weight is not caused by jogging backwards.
[insert tribal talk "backawardz nogotumstepazzulu" here]

12] Latest survey shows that 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the world’s population.

13] Don’t just stand there doing nothing! You won’t know when you’re finished.

~end Thursday 13
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Weekly, we go to the Half Price Book Store in town. It’s like a thrift shop, they’re putting out different books every day, almost all day long. So we try to go at least once a week. And I have a list of books/and or subjects that I always take with me. And search the shelves for those particular ones.

And with me, when I do find something of interest, I take it home. And no matter if I have a book on my nightstand that is being read, I have to stop reading that one and open the ones I had found that day. Of course, it was just that way this week.

I’m in the middle of reading:


“Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by H. Jacobs; it’s an excellent book. It was on my list of books to search for at the HPBooks. Mary, at Mary’s Writing Nook, suggested it some time ago. Of course, it’s a troubled life of a slave girl, and I’m, like I said, about half way through it. While I’m reading this, I have had so many questions regarding her being hidden for years, and why she wanted so desperately to become free after her children were given their freedom. Yes, I know —it’s slavery! But she was never mistreated, physically, but still had a strong distaste for her ‘owner’. Still, while reading this memoir, I’m thinking…being cooped up in her grandmother’s attic that is only three feet high at its highest, for years, becoming more or less a cripple because of it….why not go back and enjoy the last few years of her life being his daughter’s mistress? I’m just not sure my own pride would allow me to become so diligent to accept days, months, years being in darkness and losing so much of my own life to not choke down my dignity and live a bit more ‘normal’ [although still in slavery of course] –with food on the table, clothing, daylight, comfortable sleep, the little bit of luxuries of living I would think more needed. Of course, I’ve only lived a lifestyle OF FREEDOM, so it’s probably best I didn’t live back then, right? I guess I have to read the rest of the book to find the answers to my quandary.

- – -
Okay, so I found this other book on the ‘clearance shelf’ for $1.00 this week!! And as usual, I had to pick this one up and begin perusing the pages. It is of another favorite subject of mine. And it’s a biography [one of my favorite kinds of literature!] This one is on:

A British Library selection of “writers’ lives’….CHARLES DICKENS. I read from his early childhood years 1812 through to when he arrived in American in 1842 so far. I just love reading these written works. I read about how he came about writing the “Pickwick Papers” and his pay. Fighting for the rights of copyrighted work. His marriage, his father’s inability to stay out of debt, his children and his long hours of working to make ends meet.
…of how he met and fell in love with Catherine. Marrying her and having children with her. [I also read about his first real ‘true love’, Maria Beadnell….tho, because of his stature and position in England because of his father’s debt, he was finally snubbed by Maria by her father’s insistence. The photo to the left, taken from the book, is of Dickens’s wife Catherine in 1852; just after giving birth to their tenth child, Plorn.
I look forward to completing this book. I can then go back and re-read several of Dickens’s works like Great Expectations, Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickleby, A Tale of Two Cities, and have a lot more background in mind; knowing just who the characters are and who they really represent from his own life’s story. It amazes me how so many of the characters so well known from his writing is now a bit more clear on just how the people evolved in his mind and his work; taking them from his own life!! This photo is of Charles Dickens and his family at Gad’s Hill.

Y’all CAN read the “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” online here.