Notices by David Todd McCarty (davidtoddmccarty@me.dm), page 5

@WarnerCrocker For you as well. Smaller group for us than normal this year. Just our kids and grandkids and one SIL. So, only 15 of us. We’ve had unbelievable weather so many years in a row, but now it’s raining. Usually the kids are all outside and half the adults are sitting around a fire. It’s going to be NOISY with everyone indoors. Wahoo!

@WarnerCrocker :) Posted it rather late.

I suppose you were expecting something about giving thanks from me today. Well, it is, in a way. A true story. #writing #memoir https://medium.com/ellemeno/i-was-f-cking-wendy-under-the-stars-the-night-that-elvis-died-115e2cd87f6d

The King of Rock and Roll and a life built on taking the sort of risks that can make a life. A memoir.

#Memoir #Writing #Life

https://medium.com/ellemeno/i-was-f-cking-wendy-under-the-stars-the-night-that-elvis-died-115e2cd87f6d

I know everyone likes to separate them, but to me Thanksgiving is the start of the holiday season. You eat a large dead bird along with a lot of fat, carbs, and salt, then you cut down a tree and drag it inside your house. Old music plays everywhere, not all of it good, but all of it somehow nostalgic. You buy a few meaningless gifts for family members, drink some Champagne, and take a nap. A week later, you go back to work, bloated and exhausted.

I’m a romantic. #MerryChristmas #HappyNewYear

I highly recommend reading this story by a new author to Ellemeno.

#Writing #Memoir #Dogs #MentalHealth #Abuse https://medium.com/ellemeno/promises-and-scars-7ed6788272c6

We’re living in dangerous times where it’s not who you love that matters, but who you hate.

#Writing #Religion #Morality #Philosophy https://medium.com/ellemeno/the-morality-of-turtles-619f99d18eb5

@WarnerCrocker I have to laugh at the timing of these two posts.

When historians look back on the fall of Western Civilization, I predict a major turning point will be when people started watching strangers react to videos they had already seen, followed closely, of course, by kids watching videos of other kids playing video games, and finally by those who watch people open boxes of things they’ve purchased.

It’s a really weird time in human history.

Took this week off, so I’m really looking forward to Thanksgiving and getting into the Christmas spirit. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and Christmas is my second. It’s a little weird that it’s still 56ºF and sunny but I guess that’s the new normal.

When they try to kill Social Security and Medicare, Americans need to riot in the streets. Maybe we could borrow a few million French people.

I don’t mean protest either. I mean burn things. Full on riots. Complete lawlessness.

For both sides to a have a valid opinion, there has to be a common structure and language for defining reality. A coin has two sides, but that doesn’t make them equal, and certainly not if my side is a coin and yours is a turnip.

When I was eight, my family moved from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania, and from the time I entered the third grade, till the moment I graduated the eighth, I attended a rural Mennonite school, which was different from the other Christians I’d known in that they were pacifists. My family came from Protestant and Catholic Irish pioneer stock, so pacifism was not really a familiar concept. If we weren’t drinking, we were fighting, so pacifism didn’t come up a whole hell of a lot.

https://medium.com/ellemeno/the-children-of-pacifists-90f9e26d1288

I have a rather curious relationship with both time and space that I suspect is rather predictable, and more than likely, fairly universal. Something happens as we age that changes our perspective and opens our eyes to the vulnerability of memory. Once you realize that you only have 20–30 years left to live, you are assaulted by the revelation of just how short 20–30 years really is. If the first few decades went by that quickly, imagine how short the last ones will be.
https://medium.com/ellemeno/my-curious-relationship-with-time-and-space-f931d3241c93

@WarnerCrocker In a month it starts getting lighter again. Hang on.

@WarnerCrocker Yeah. I’m using the word spirituality, and I don’t mean it has to be a religion. I’m just saying we no longer have that common bond and we’ve done nothing to replace it.

It seems obvious to me that human beings have a deep seated need for spirituality. For centuries, religion filled that role, giving people a common purpose and a shared belief system. In America, religion was the backbone of the culture. Keeping a community tied together in countless unseen ways. We were taught that rugged individualism was the highest ideal and then the internet came along and made it possible to finally be alone.

We got rid of religion but didn’t replace it with anything.

I’m so pissed at Medium. Ready to kill two of my publications and resign my ability to nominate stories. I’ve had it.

#Writing

@WarnerCrocker David Sedaris says that when he was young, they weren’t allowed to say “Shut up,” but by the time his little brother came along it had become perfectly acceptable to shout “Shut the fuck up.”

“No smoking pot” became “No smoking pot in the house” before finally settling on “Please don’t smoke any more pot in the living room.”