This summer I joined road runner for both faster internet and cablevision. We must get over 200 channels now, but there still is nothing to watch that's worthwhile. Timmy and I got so that we could see the first two seconds of Raymond or Seinfeld and say, "this is the episode where..." like Name that Tune only there were no winnings involved. So we started to listen to tapes. I found two Harry Potter tapes in the Thrift Shop for $1 each and we were hooked. Right now we are waiting for the last Harry Potter book on tape. This one is popular and we were number 36 of people waiting for the audio book from the Tivoli Library, and last I heard we had come down to 26. In the meantime we have been listening to Garrison Keillor and his Lake Wobegon stories. Right after supper, I get settled on the couch under the afghan my mother knitted for me when I graduated college in 1985. We turn the gas stove on and I shut off the living room light. The stove throws off shadows much like a fireplace and we listen to the smooth voice of Garrison Keillor as he tells his stories of life in Minnesota. With his entertaining tales and the lights flickering we could be in a prehistoric setting, sitting in a circle with the clan leader telling us about the saber toothed tiger that got away or the people that live in the cave across the river that really aren't very nice. It's in our blood, story telling and listening, in our DNA. My mother, we called her Bucky, was a story teller. Oh, she would tell us about when Grandma and Poppy moved from the city in the 20's, they bought their house really cheap because the previous owner's daughter had killed herself by jumping into the well after being jilted. Or, the neighbor Nellie Chase, her only child had died after eating one of the first jars of processed baby food. And Nellie's husband was a gambler, and when he won he would hide the money in the stone walls that separated our house from the Chases. Grandma's sister Aunt Ana married Uncle Arnold whose mother came to live with them...a crazy little woman, who couldn't speak English and had a tendency to run away, so they locked her in the cellar, bars on the windows and everything, but she still would escape. One time after breaking out she found ripe berries, and ate so many they gave her diarrhea and when Uncle Arnold found her, she threw her poopy underwear right at his head! Oh, how we loved her stories. Horrible though they were, we grew up on them, mesmerized much the way the kids look today with their gameboys under their noses. My grandson lives next door and he often comes over for SLT - Special Linny Time. One of his favorite things to do is tell stories. We take turns, often using props from the toy box, reversing roles of listener to teller. Last week, I was doing a version of Goldilocks and he stood up and interrupted:"You've given me two MORE ideas." I enjoy this time as much as he does. During the last week as part of my usual short lived January resolutions, I have been sorting family letters...hundreds of them saved over the last 40 years. They too are stories, silent, but when I read them I can almost hear the writer's voice. My mother, always thrifty, would write down to the last piece of the paper. At the end of one of her letters she wrote: "Well, Linda, no news is good news, so they say. What the hell does that mean anyway?" My sister Maureen's letters are so funny, I laugh out loud reading some of them. We both went through divorces at just about the same time, so we often exchanged war stories of our dates and selection of men. Maureen's support group of women were having the same problems and she wrote that one woman stood up and said,"I don't know why I don't just go the local prison and tell them to send me out the worse, hardened cases, because I seem to be finding them anyway." I guess you could say that blogs are now the story tellers, instead of the flickering fire light, it's the flickering monitor as we follow the stories and lives of strangers that seem like family. People we've never met, but who reveal themselves to us as personally as any lifetime friend. And so I leave you today fellow blog readers, that's the news from Clay Hill Road, where all the women are strong, the men are good looking and the children are above average.