Melanie Archives - Page 8 of 11

December 9, 2018 by Melanie Ormand - No Comments

‘Tis the Season for…Orange!

In these days of red and green, I cringe. Orange is My Color.

Imagine my delight when this little orb danced into my line of sight.

Its mutant reflection calmed concerns about aging handwriting.

Triple bonus came upon realizing this is my first-observed orange Christmas decoration.

If this is the wave of future noels, I’m all in.

The exploding consumerism of the holiday season sickens me. I avoid malls and stores. I toss every catalog as it arrives.

Our house decorations are deliberate and minimal. Fireplace nutcracker. Santa moose. Seven-inch white ceramic tree. German music box.

Red and green candles atop the dining table remind us this is the season to slow down, offer light, pay attention, and breathe deep. Ignore what does not enhance Life.

I call it a season for the senses: see; listen; smell; touch, taste. No cash required. No purchases needed. Only savory observation.

Like an unexpected orange Christmas decoration.

I’d gone to Sugar Land’s Town Center to observe our infamous “Selfie” sculpture.

The bronze piece outraged many people at its unveiling. Even Good Morning America featured the art. Why the fuss?

“Selfie” is fun, engaging, and contemporary.

If we want to engage more people in appreciating artwork, we must experiment, modernize some creations.

Is that not partly why Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton” still shines?

The same answer applies to painting, writing, dancing, etc.–name your art form.

One of the models for “Selfie” is Morgan, the niece of fellow RoadBroad Kay Cox. After my traffic box post last week, Kay enlightened me about the prevalence of public art in Sugar Land.

My cosmopolitan pride needed the education and the reminder: it’s never too late to learn. And so, I returned to the road.

Since, I’ve wandered across Sugar Land’s parks, streets, sidewalks, plazas and bridges. A wealth of public art surfaced. Color-filled traffic light boxes at 13 intersections. Another 18 installations of bronze, iron, granite, and glass in sculpture, mobile, monument, and tiled form, all encircling an old Brazos River sugar town.

What about where you live? Is there public art? Please tell us more!

In seeing how other communities create their art spaces, we each learn. As we share with each other, we enrich both our communities and our own lives. Thus, change gains wings.

It’s not just stories we need. We need art. In all its forms.

P.S. Notice the orange shirt in the “Selfie” picture?

Unplanned for this blog post.

Like that orange orb, floating katey-cornered from where I stood.

Ah, another synchronicity of the season…

December 2, 2018December 2, 2018 by Melanie Ormand - No Comments

Why December 2nd Matters

We fly the flag at our house every December 2nd.

This year, for the first time, I notice its wrinkles, saggy middle, and a lengthening shadow.

I smile. Kind of like (cough, cough)… us!

Twenty nine years ago today, DH and I married.

That ’80s hair, the pouffy hat, and those puffy sleeves offered omens of flyaway adventure.

Arrive they did.

We’ve traveled by land, water, and sky. In planes, trains, boats, ships, and submarines. Up mountains on Segway and in aerial trams. Over rivers and through woods (yes, sometimes to see Grandma). In three decades, we’ve slept in all 51 states plus 18 foreign countries on two continents.

Some doubted we’d travel so far for so long. A tumultuous five-year courtship preceded our noon-time wedding ceremony.

Pre-marriage counseling smoothed our ride. We predicted our issues and developed a response plan. How’s that for two crisis communicators?

We committed to travel together. Through Everything. Our platinum bands meant more than simple finger metal.

Shout-out to Dr. Tim Van Duivendyk for his wedding “charge:” you’ve got to meet in the middle with each other — and the middle that’s in the middle of those two middles is very difficult to find.

Whatever road we’re on, DH and I aim for the middle lane. Sometimes, we don’t arrive at the same time. Sometimes, somebody must wait waaay longer than they’d like for the other. But, always, we meet in our middle. Eventually.

In writing this, I realize this strategy applies to many life situations.

Yes, December 2, 1989 was our Big Day. Big, too, for others in other years for other reasons:

On This Date BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

1823	President James Monroe outlines his Manifest Destiny doctrine.
1969	The Boeing 747 jumbo jet debuts.

Whether it’s across a century or only half as long, the years, the middle, and the adventure roll on.

For each of us in our own ways.

For DH and me, we’re making more than a life together.

We’re creating a Story.

What’s yours?

November 27, 2018 by Melanie Ormand - 2 Comments

Being Art

The headline stuns.

How did I not know about an art feast gracing a baker’s dozen intersections across my town?

My ego burns.

Isn’t a 26-year, artsy resident — one who’s also an avowed news junkie — supposed to know all about the who and what of Art where she lives?

I share my discovery with fellow RoadBroad Ellen, who mentions that similar traffic-signal art boxes stand across Houston. My mind wonders — is there anything Sugar Land has that the bigger, bossier sister city, 22 miles northeast, doesn’t?

My ego sizzles anew. Town pride smokes in the same skillet.

A Google search confirms Houston and Sugar Land are among hundreds across America that have repurposed ugly metal boxes into talking points for travelers stuck in traffic. The effort began at least 15 years ago in Connecticutt. Leave it to the Yankees to be so clever. And yet…

What a delightful way to turn unsightly man-made mechanics into eye treasures for the stuck, the delayed, the bored!

Ignorance morphs into curiousity which yields opportunity.

A day later, it’s time for an Art Box Scavenger Hunt.

First find is Judy Hope’s Tweet, Tweet, Sweet. Her melange of birds, hiding under this overpass, speaks to me. Freedom. Happiness. Peace. And color!

I dub the next stop “Blue Belle.” Not for that Brenham confection up the road.

Vivienne Dang’s Lady in Blue looks outward, dreamily, yearning of a bright future.

Her face rests directly atop the traffic box door. I wonder is that how she opens up — only at eye level?

The sea of blue in which the entire image sits mirrors the background sky. Are we all sitting in a similar sea of blue?

The bees arrive down the road.

I offer thanks these insects are not this large in real life.

Why does this box scare me even as it lures me closer?

Mike Doan calls his creation Bizzy Beeze, praising the vital role played by honey bees in the farms that circle the Sugar Land community.

I realize an odd truth. The Bees have this blog post. Hmm…

Next comes Blossoms. That’s my title Artist Nataliya Scheib titled her creation, Butterfly Garden.

I see only flowers. Zoom in and you’ll find butterflies by the dozen, darting to and fro among the color-filled panorama of flowers.

This is the only traffic box I touch. Can you guess why?

The final box I visit yields a single Butterfly.

Joy Chandler’s creation of Sweet Transformation highlights the plight of the endangered Monarch Butterfly, supposedly native to Sugar Land.

This lone image echoes Freedom. Joy. And the approaching Spring. The background of pastel circles add a sweet, supportive pallet.

I smile, standing here at the last traffic-box art installation.

Birds. Blue Belle. Bees. Blossoms. Butterfly.

Don’t forget Boxes. As in Traffic-Box Art.

The theme emerges: B Art. And now you ‘get’ the title of this blog post.

But what it all means? Alfie, do you know?

Me? I have no clue. But I will drive back down Highway 90A before long.

Eight traffic boxes await review.

November 19, 2018 by Melanie Ormand - No Comments

Recording a Reading Revolution

I love books, as evidenced by this corner of my house:

Again, I’m a planet outlier.

Publisher’s Weekly bemoans a 20 percent decline in fiction sales. Only one year out of the past five have sales climbed. Thank Harper Lee’s 2015 book, Go Set a Watchman.

All the reasons for declining fiction sales equal sensible logic:

More competition for entertainment hours and products.

More closings of brick-and-mortar stores.

Fewer book reviews.

Shorter attention spans.

Even audiobooks are displacing the printed novel. Mike Shatzkin, a noted publishing industry guru, calls it words-to-be-heard vs. words-to-be-read.

What’s ignored in the worrying noise is the price we’re paying by not reading.

Be it television, video games, the World Wide Web, streaming books, and other entertainment options, we’re actively rewiring both our brains and bodies. Few of us pay attention to the consequences, either short or long-term.

Writer Maryanne Wolf takes a look in her fascinating (ahem, non-fiction book), Reader Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World.

Wolf cites varying studies that blame the widespread screen explosion for our collapsing attention spans, declining imagination and thinking skills, worsening physical health, and strained relationships.

One of the first studies came out in 1998. Linda Stone, of the Virtual Worlds Group at Microsoft, possessed frightening prescience when she coined the term “continuous partial attention.”

Stone referenced children specifically when she created the term. Twenty years later, she’d no doubt label us adults with the same syndrome.

Tag me guilty, too. But only when I’m not reading a book. In that printed landscape, my attention laser-focuses to imagine a world only I can see.

Delicious creativity and control! Fun and fulfilling, too!

Yet, these recent books and magazines frighten me about this road we’re on. There seems an almost willful ignorance for behavior and consequences. In confronting these effects, there’s information and messages to share, heed.

Even so, I cross my fingers, remembering what’s happened with music. Printed books could travel a similar road.

Remember LP’s and turntables? They’re back, and popular, for reasons I don’t comprehend. Records over CD or streaming tunes? Clunky equipment over flat, round disks or no plastic at all? Pray tell, why?

Amid my semi-Luddite questioning, possibility arises.

Once can become twice.

Music now, books next?

Meantime, I read, wait, and check my mailbox.

Shoes inbound promise a coming retro-revolution.

Our world needs more fiction, published. And read.

A broad can hope.

November 11, 2018 by Melanie Ormand - 2 Comments

A Bag, A Man, A Card

To live well, we must see.

But some days, life demands listening, too.

Consider yesterday.

At the grocery store, I laid my blue recycled bag onto the short conveyor belt. Beneath the bag scooted a pair of soup jars, cornbread muffins and bananas, plus a bag of greens. Dinner.

I turned to my purse. On the phone, I tapped the grocery app then reached for my wallet. I heard a male voice and looked up.

The checkout person — millennial, I assumed — repeated his question, “you like books?”

I smiled.

Compadre! I love when this happens!

“Love them actually.” I shook my head, wondering why he had asked me the question. He held up my bag, returned my smile.

My grin broadened. His friendly blue eyes returned kinship. On the conveyor belt, his hands slowed. Both palms now clutched the bag of greens as if they offered secret treasure. I looked to my left. A growing line behind me. Here we go.

“I write books, too,” I said and, without pausing for his acknowledgment, volunteered, “My first novel, it’s in progress. Agents awaiting completion.”

“Really?” his eyes alit with new interest. “What’s it about?”

My mind raced. What do I tell this reader about a book targeted at older women, female readers who’ve lived longer lives than his, many who’ve raised children and worked for older versions of himself?

A brain flash. Elevator pitch then the blog. I sped-talked through my novel plot then soared to here, the RoadBroads blog. I was on the road here at the grocery store.

“You might check out my blog.”

He cocked an eyebrow. My left hand clawed through my purse, scrounging for a RoadBroads business card. Holding one aloft like an envious prize, I elevator-pitched the blog.

(An explanation for non-writers: an elevator pitch equals a short summary of a story-in-progress. The concept riffs off the image of a writer and agent riding an elevator together, giving the former only a few quick floors to tell her entire novel to the latter.)

Mr. Checkout took my card and listened to my generous pitch. WIth kind eyes and matching generosity.

In our brief exchange, he taught me much.

When you listen, you see people, discover opportunity, and, sometimes, find a fellow reader.

Translation: listening builds Life.

Plus, we’re never too old to learn.

A day later, I wonder: did the grocery store exchange begin with my t‑shirt? Pardon the sloppy selfie but consider the sentiment.

Like listening, words matter, too. Now. More than Ever.

November 4, 2018November 4, 2018 by Melanie Ormand - 1 Comment

On the Radio Road

The glory of a road trip is its implied permission to slow down and see.

Even quickies allow a glance of both.

First, I beg your advance forgiveness. This post is intensely personal.

Yesterday involved a quickie trip, four hours by car north to Kilgore, a small east Texas town near the Louisiana state line. There, at the Texas Broadcasting Museum, DH joined 17 other inductees into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame.

Big honor, big deal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dQtG38hfjw

This first-ever RoadBroads video is worth your viewing time. Objective? Of. Course. Not.

Truthfully, 55 years’ work in one industry—radio and television—across four states and six cities merits celebration. In today’s world, where do you find that kind of dedicated work and unending passion?

Our present-day rush-rush-rush world celebrates the opposite: speed and superficial over slow and deep. The 240-mile drive forced me to experience the latter.

The heavy blanket of morning fog hovered across fields that resembled where I grew up. Those Texas Panhandle wheat fields told me to leave. Now they spoke of memory rising in solitude.

The mist of this slow Saturday sunrise, sight offered hope, oddly.

Afternoon and a drive back home to Houston changed the view. A different kind of hope.

Something about the sun insistent on cracking with light, Cohen-like. Clouds. Breakthrough. More hope.

I smiled, understanding unnecessary.

In between these trip bookends, the day became a trip down memory lane. Like DH, I worked in radio/TV news in a previous life. We used equipment like this every hour on the hour. We dubbed it The Board.

Translation: it’s one piece of equipment, used in the dark ages (aka ’70s to early ’90s) of radio to communicate with listeners like you. Standing before The Board in a now-silent control room , my fingers twitched at my sides. Ancient muscle memory reactivated. Palms flattened against my thighs. My mind returned, smiling at the The Board, to the studio in Pampa—or was it Lubbock? Austin? Houston?

I backtimed to meet the network clean. Fingers hovered above the cart’s green “start” button, right thumb flat against the mic lever ready to go live, bladder squeezing tight for an overdue break, and lips ready to pronounce another station ID: “KPDN, Pampa, Texas. 740 AM on your radio dial. It’s eleven o’clock.”

I swear I heard the station jingle in my ear, through non-existent head phones. My mouth even whispered the time. In my memory, the network sounder blended in and the join was clean. “Yes!” I whispered.

Later, I saw these rabbit ears atop the now-tiny-looking television. Do you remember?

Change rules. Then and now, it always has. Even when we don’t like it.

Perhaps we can embrace that truth, beginning with slowing down. Going deep.

Seeing. Remembering. Celebrating.

Special memories. Special days. Special people.

October 26, 2018October 27, 2018 by Melanie Ormand - No Comments

Breaking RoadBroad News

Change is good. Especially when it involves the RoadBroads.

We’re growing. Ergo, a new tagline created for our blog:

Women writers. Ordinary journeys. Extraordinary stories.

Check out the look on our first official blog business card:

That view offers only half the story. Flip the card and you’ll find the full color, glossy image. Recognize that logo? The bonus on this side? Your favorite blogger’s name sitting in the upper right-hand corner.

This image actually shows our individual business cards stacked as one long piece of paper. A certain blogger has yet to figure out how to split .pdf images in WordPress. Sort of like her problem with blog pictures overall.

C’est le vie: so much to learn.

I’m never bored. Grateful.

Next step in our blog growth is to “seed” these cards. The concept comes from authors placing their books in locations where potential readers (ahem, make that translation = fans, buyers, etc.) will find them.

I call the best seed sites discovery places. Possibilities include:

- Coffee shops

- Airport terminals

- Bookstores

- Women’s stores

Other ideas? I’d love to hear! After all, we’ve got two big ol’ boxes of these beauts to spread far, wide, high, and low. Think I’m joking?

Six months post-blog launch (to the day — love that unplanned synchronicity!), we RoadBroads aim for a bigger world. We expand our reach. After all, what awaits us — roads to travel, women writers to meet and greet, adventures to relive here with you.

Who knows what comes next?

October 22, 2018October 22, 2018 by Melanie Ormand - No Comments

To See or Not to See

It only took 34 years. To need a new front windshield for my car.

Blame four rocks smashing into my windshield. A trio in the past month alone. Could that be a record in America’s fourth largest city?

Years? Rocks? Days? All smacking into a single pane of auto glass?

It’s repaired now but I wonder how long this perfection will last. I considered not replacing the windshield at all. With my recent track record, was it worth it?

Consider another factor.

It’s been a spring, summer, and fall for endless car repairs. New tires. New brakes. New shocks. New struts. Restored air conditioning.

Traveling nearly three thousand miles across three states, plus mountain driving in summer heat, would impact anything and anyone. Add to that 60K miles acquired across seven years in Houston’s humidity atop her pothole-laced freeways.

Besides, every car needs routine maintenance. Even more results from the adventures of a committed RoadBroad who must venture out weekly to gather her blog posts.

But this kind of cash makes for a hard swallow. These repairs exceed 16 months of car payments. What I completed four years ago.

I wanted to leave the windshield as it was. Ugly, yes. But it’s only glass. Ugly, ugly glass.

Look for yourself.

See the jagged crack on the lower left? Swing your eyes to the far right. Spy the dot of pebbled glass? That’s the Hillcroft rock.

Out of range are the remaining pair of cracks. The worst split the windshield’s top quadrant like a boxer’s uppercut.

I felt confident of my do-nothing approach. Then the heavy rains came.

Caught in a blinding downpour, the freeway’s dotted lines vanished before my eyes. I white-knuckled the steering wheel and glued my eyes to the roadway, bird-dogging for other blinded drivers. The windshield began to mock me. Its four cracks widened, expanding, before my terrified eyes.

It’s expensive to be a RoadBroad, I decided. New windshield got fitted two days later.

Meaning-Me decided to reframe the issue.

Maybe now you’re free. To see clear and clean the road that lies before you.

Then my eyes whispered, reminding me of July’s summer laser surgery. A sudden onslaught racked them, too. It was a bout with spider vision, aka PVD. That’s short for Posterior Vitreous Detachment, a common, surprise malady afflicting the post-60 crowd. A second whisper chimed.

New glass. New eyes. New view.

When I hear my inner voice(s) whisper like this, I listen. Even if it’s woo-woo. Or simply mental. Who cares?

Now I can see.

I’m ready for the road.

October 14, 2018October 14, 2018 by Melanie Ormand - No Comments

When Old Becomes New

A delightful discovery this morning: three new trees planted along my daily walk path.

The sight stopped me in a near-stumble. I jerked my head to the left, staring before snapping this once-in-a-walk image.

Questions pounded my brain walls:

How long have these oak sprouts been here?

What made our tree police suddenly shout “Green!”

Did last week’s U.N. climate change report finally awaken city fathers?

Perhaps you remember the breath-stopping removal of four trees from this same walkway last summer.

A mid-July lightning bolt had zapped one oak tree, splitting it in two. It was a beautiful, natural strike. Destructive natural art remained. Tears followed.

Suburbia struck back in a wood frenzy, removing four trees in response to Mother Nature’s single zap. Where I live, we don’t remove damage. We play Whack A Tree. To ensure nothing stands in weather’s way, we haul in the Big Equipment and ground down the leftovers - all the way down to nuttin’, baby.

In my new man-made walking ground, I sought, and found, a gift: Starfish Bevo. See it/him? A horizontal figure on the right up there. Oak ground bits resembling quinoa. My new morning breakfast?

For weeks, I checked my little tree star every day. Then New Normal became Sidewalk Path. I forgot Loss.

Imagine my glee this morning as I stumbled onto this New New Normal.

Upon looking closer, my smile broadened.

Starfish Quinoa has a buddy. Shade.

Mornings like this urge me outdoors every dawn. Five mile walk, six a‑m start. 2372 walks since April, 2012. Yes, I counted.

I walk daily to remain healthy.

Today reminded me of a second reason: to see. When I opened my eyes — really opened them — I saw new life and second chances.

Right around the corner surrounding a trifecta of trees.

How personal, meaningful can a little daily walk become?

October 8, 2018October 22, 2018 by Melanie Ormand - No Comments

A Rose is a Rose is a … Story!

The sun-kissed white rose lay abandoned in the red-hot seat of the grocery cart.

What came first?

Did its buyer choose to leave the gift my DH had just handed to me?

Or was it a senior DH who forgot the present for his/her love?

And so began Story Time, Round 543,928 between DH and me.

Yes, we play this game a lot. And we’ve been together 34 years.

It was weekly road trip for groceries. The two of us: me, the RoadBroad, and him, well, I’ll call him RoadDude for this post. After all, you’ll be hearing more of him as these posting adventures continue.

As I locked the car, I saw DH/RoadDude (this is going to get complicated) grab a grocery cart. Then he stopped and pulled back. Turning toward me, he pointed inside the cart.

The two of us froze and stared at the orphaned flower. It lay there with such strength. It radiated an odd, quiet solemnity. How does a rose gain that power?

It was then I noticed its head — the flowery part — was flat. As if it’d been smashed.

DH read my mind.

“They left it because it got ruined,” he said.

“No, they forgot,” I responded and went on, “because it was an old guy and he had an attack of some-timers.”

In RoadDude’s big brown eyes, I spied a sparkle. I knew what was coming.

Tall Tales of Creative Riffing. Our favorite game.

His turn, first: “No, he accidentally put the sack of potatoes on the flower and when he saw it flattened up, he said ‘well, she’ll just have to get over no roses for her birthday.”

My response: “Or he’s back at home, looking for his anniversary gift to her and he keeps saying, ‘I know I picked up a white rose for you, darling.’ And she smiles gently at him, her eyes filling with tears and pats his hand. His eyes well up as he repeatedly apologizes for no flowers for their 65th.”

Him: “Maybe he bought it to leave for us, a Saturday Pay-It-Forward action. No why needed.”

Me: “And we found it. I like that one. You win!”

I reached in to the cart, picked up the rose, and said, “Here’s your prize!”

We both laughed and returned the flower back to its original perch, leaving it for the next couple to story-time their find.

I’d like to believe my writer fantasy came true.

Who knows the real story of how a long-stemmed yellowed white rose, wrapped in an empty grocery sack and tied off with navy blue ribbon, came to be in an abandoned grocery cart in Texas?

The truth doesn’t matter. What does is the possibilities for play, storytelling, a wee bit of magic on another ordinary day.

How about you? Do you play the storytelling game on errand day?

Best part of this game?

No wrong answers!

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