I've been thinking lately about whether keeping an ejournal is worthwhile. I've been at this 3 1/2 years now, and in terms of writing something occasionally (my original goal was once per week) it definitely has kept me at it, so that is good. When I kept a paper (or word processored) journal, I often had very long gaps where I abandoned it. But sometimes when I look back on the types of things I wrote before I posted entries on the Internet, I think that I used to write much more creatively. I don't know whether increased education makes for a more competent, but less inventive and passionate writer, or if the public nature of posting here is smothering.

Then, this has nothing to do with my personal posting, but when I surf around in the "blogosphere" (how I hate all the jargon associated with blogging), aside from my small handful of regular reads, I am so turned off. Too many people are nasty, petty, ignorant, clueless...I could go on and on. Sometimes some truly stupid thing that someone has shared, on a blog or in the comments of a blog bothers me afterwards. What is it about electronic communication that makes some people so ugly? I've written this before here, but it always makes me think of the movie Peggy Sue Got Married, where she says to the high school beatnik, "try to write something beautiful."

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I've been meaning to share a little story here about the holiday. When I was a kid - I'm not sure how old I was, I'd say in one of the upper grades of elementary school, my father was in Florida visiting family and the rest of us were going to spend the day at my grandmother's. I would say grandparents', but I am not sure whether it was before or after 1971, when my grandfather died. My mother was doing a lot of the cooking, but we were going to eat at Mimmie's.

There was a huge snowstorm, and although it was only a few miles away, we couldn't drive there. I'll never forget what Ma said to us; it was "get your boots on." So we did, and then we loaded everything into a sled, and walked from our house to Mimmie's, pulling the sled full of food behind us. When I returned to school, nearly everyone besides me who was eating elsewhere for Thanksgiving shared stories of meals consisting of hotdogs, and whatever else was handy in the freezer because they couldn't go out.

Tonight it is going to snow; it will be the first significant snowfall of the season (and I will be thinking of Rudy, and his love for the white stuff). I wonder if there will be a repeat of that long ago Thanksgiving for a lot of folks? But I guess not, the abundance of four-wheel drive vehicles makes it unlikely.

I should be doing something else right now - and I am off to do it. (That's make apple pie!)