"Death Visiting"--My sister Linda's poem in Vooman's Voice profound, the reason she is called a poet

My sister Linda has just written a poem in Vooman's Voice in an entry about going to poet Harold Norse's memorial at the Beat Museum which proves to me why she has been called a poet for many years. Read and see if you don't think she is a poet, too. Her blog is on my blog list.
Death has been visiting here the last few days, in one of his stages, the reason why I cannot get to your blogs. I think I will be recovered in a few days.

I have tied flashback now to premonition

After thinking a lot about it, I just do not think that a memory over 60 years old would have the power to grip my mind in the manner that this one did, but a premonition might. Premonitions tie themselves to memories or whatever has similar characteristics to some future event as a way of trying to warn people to prepare. For example a while before my dad died I thought of him one day, and instead of his face appearing in my mind a skull came and then slowly faded. I also had several dreams indicating death since this was going to be a big event in the family. Since my dad was still in his early sixties, none of us expected him to die as soon as he did.
There was a lot of pain associated with this particular memory that ended when I returned home from school and was able to put a plan into action that ended any opportunity for the second molester to make contact. But up until then he tortured me keeping me in his sights. I think the premonition part of it is tied to a hostile person in my life whose health may be worsening. This does not mean that death is immident. For example, my mother became brain damaged to the point she could no longer speak so actually she was a more benign presence until her death a number of years later. She smiled some but was just more less blank.
But anyway my sisters and I are getting to the age that any of us or our companions could go at any time. My sister Margie's husband had a recent health crisis and he is nearly 90. We must be prepared for the next ten years to be a time of departure. So now I feel more at peace about not going to Utah and seeing my sisters. I am going to have to prepare more in order to make long trips. Taking more time in between.
Raymond just called me and I told him I thought the experience was a premonition. He has known me to have premonitions before, notably one I had about him in a dream, that his life was in great danger. A number of the details of this dream came true in just two weeks time, and he did indeed, barely escape death. I felt that by warning him ahead of time he was better able to recognize he was in danger of being murdered and acted possibly more forcefully to protect himself than he might have done otherwise.
I also had a very strong impulse to call my sister Ann about this strange waking experience and she was gone and I connected up to her husband in one call who has long been hostile to me. He has been under a lot of stress with some health problems that were serious but not life threatening so he was especially irritable. My sister Ann has the worst kind of diabetes possible because she has no pancreas and she has recently experienced a lot of worry because the enzymes she must have to stay alive jumped $400 in cost when the drug companies forced the generic drug companies out which offered the drug a lot cheaper. So I think this call led to her husband for a reason, because it was possibly a premonition about her or his health. Since it was tied to a hostile man, it is more likely his health is at the highest risk. Nothing he has going on right now seems life threatening, but the fact that he keeps having some quite serious problems may indicate a general deterioration in health. He has been unable to stop smoking.
As far as I have experienced them, premonitions cannot really prevent any big event in motion from happening, although I think there is a window during which small events can perhaps be divested of extreme danger when warnings are taken seriously and accurately interpreted.
I have generally engendered hostility in the family because I had to accuse molesters, but I did it very slowly over a period of many years, which I think sometimes needs to be done for damage control. I have also reacted to domestic violence since I experienced it almost to the point of being killed. Hostile husbands always raise my ire, and men who for not very clear reasons become very hostile to members of the wife's family. I think this is a form of spousal abuse which the hostile husband tries to blame on the bad in law who causes him to be hostile, but it also has to do with him, and means that he has trouble containing hostile reactions. This is not just about me, it is about him. So I would say to any relative whose husband is extra hostile to me, what is his problem, he is unable to be fair. I will not and cannot take the blame for everything.
I know what problems I present to the family. What any member who has been the victim of serious crimes during childhood does to the rest of the family. I had to become an accuser in order to get justice at all. My second molester has a very large family up there, and some of them became extremely hostile when I named him as the second molester which I did not do for years. But I also knew he messed with two other male teens in the family, startng possibly when they were children. So he did not just victimize me, but it is very hard for a family to accept what another member might do when a crme was involved.
This is what happens when you surface this kind of crime, why it becomes so hard to tell. Relatives become incensed. You make a lot of enemies. This is all part of why I have a hard time going to Utah. There was also another very difficult aspect of the molesting, my dad involved with the molesters in possible homosexual relationships that added an even more volatile element, them angry at him and using me for revenge. You make me too angry I hurt your daughter. Then other molesters became hostile to me. Then outsiders or in laws not wanting to believe any of this or possibly feeling defensive about some of their own behavior.
I had one man arrested for child molesting nobody had been able to touch. He was too dangerous. He was suspected of killing people. Having such a person arrested can be a very ugly business. Child molesting is too close to killing. It is an attack on the personality that can leave deep scars.
My sister tried to have a molester arrested up there she knew was messing with teen age boys. He had molested my son when he was 7 that I could not prove at the time. Her building that housed a bar was burned twice. The molester who had been arrested on a previous charge of arson was furious at her because a parent took a shot at him and she was trying to get him arrested for his molesting crimes. We were terrified she was going to get killed. Law enforcement is not easy, believe me. It is dangerous work, and people who work with law enforcement and go to the police with such crimes put themselves at risk. As an adult I have not hesitated to involve law enforcement if I was threatened, and I felt they saved my life several times.
Unreasonable hostility is always a bad sign in anybody and needs to be studied for its causes.

Getting better with good Farmer's Market produce

I think healthy food is the best cure for whatever ails you and today I cooked a pinto bean soup with onion, celery, and green pepper, and to go with it, I made fresh ziccini salad with ingredients all bought fresh at the Farmer's Market. The produce there is picked fresh possibly five days to a week or more sooner than produce in grocery stores Then I sweetened the salad made with ziccini, red onion, red and green pepper, chopped nuts, and 3 chopped sweet pickle with raw honey I bought there which I think is the best sweetener ever. It went in the cider and olive oil dressing. Then when I ate the bean soup I put a serving of the salad in with it making a hot and cold dish. When I eat good fresh food like this I feel I am just popping with vitamins and minerals I need.
When I buy fresh spinach there I have invented a spinach open faced sandwich which can be made with other greens as well. I cook the spinach until barely tender and then drain the water from it and spread it on pieces of buttered toast. I sprinkle a few drops of cider or wine vinegar on it. A very healthy lunch!
Doc bought a foccaccio bread today made with cheese and jalapeno and never have I tasted such good bread. He likes gourmet bread and bought this loaf at Safeway. He is now on good terms with the baker and says that if he does not buy the bread they quit making it! He has been extra good to me the last few days as he feel he did let me down when I needed care.
I am still trying to figure out what happened, but I know I am going to treat my worst memories with more respect. I seem to have gotten them back between the protective firewall distancing them again. I decided to check Inside Edition to see if they talked about what had triggered off this flashback. They did and actually played some of the kid's testimony again. Then they showed some of the jurors who all said that this kid just was not credible. That he had been coached. All 12 voted to acquit. I felt some indignation as I thought how is he supposed to sound, but then that was my gut reaction based on my own experiences trying to tell something nobody, absolutely nobody wants to hear.
But I felt nothing but a normal reaction, so I think just resting my mind and distancing myself was the road back to normalcy. I still have not been able to read blogs, so did feel like something happened out of the ordinary. It has not helped for us to be in a heat wave here in Phoenix, a record high 115 yesterday and a 114 today. When we go out in heat like this we all feel a little sick.
I did get upset the next day when I talked to relatives in Utah and told them that I would not be going to Utah again this year, as there was hostility emanating through the phone lines. It never ends. I needed more time to build myself up. Again, I felt the only solution was to go up there for something so positive that would give me such a lift any negative reactions would not ruin my visit after a long trip. I don't know if this can happen but it is a good thing to aim for.
I have felt so strongly about the hostility and danger I experienced in Boulder that I have told some of my kids long ago not to put even a marker in the cemetary up there for me. I have willed my body to science but for $40 they can get the remains in a few ashes after science is done with me, but I want them to toss them out in the saguaro, for I have come to feel they are sentinels, standing guard, and they are built to protect. The saguaro desert is the friendliest place on earth I can imagine my ashes blowing in the wind.

Watching video causes flashback to painful past in Boulder

It always seemed to me that there was a kind of mafia of western outlaws in Boulder, and they could hurt you. Unfortunately I would have to number my dad as one of them. He was a great cowboy, but he was involved in too many violent criminal acts for me to think he was anything but an outlaw. I had never experienced anything like this flashback, but it was triggered by watching a very disturbing video on Inside Edition. It was of the boy's testimony about Michael Jackson that was played in court for the jurors during his trial for child molesting. Regardless of whether the charge was true or not, there was enough authenticity in it to trigger this flashback to my painful hours of trying to figure out how to stop my molester. I just could not break up this grip the past suddenly had on my mind. I tried to think of people I could call who could help me, since at the time it happened Doc would have been at his drunkest and no good in the evening. I figured my sister Ann could help but I could not get a hold of her. She had apparently gone somewhere. After about an hour and I still could not shake it, I finally went down and knocked on the man's door who had so recently traumatized us all with his meltdown in a binge of suicidal drinking. I knew he was intelligent enough to handle this persistent painful flashback and I was right. He listened to me and eventually after about a half an hour of talking to him I would say I was able to come out of it.
But it was just like it happened yesterday. Instead of 65 years ago. The perpetrator was another outlaw hired man with a terrible hatred for my dad. It was like he was toying with the idea of how much harm to do me to try to quell his resentment. Again I felt I had to handle the problem of ongoing hits on me while doing the least harm I could to my family. By the time he had stalked me every year for three years, I became determined this crime would not escalate into a blood feud that would end up in somebody's death, which I thought it very well might if I told anybody. This time I thought it was most likely my dad who would get killed. I would not have been surprised if my perpetrator had not fantasized killing him a number of times. I felt it was up to me to see that the violence went no further so what I finally came up with was a plan to deny him opportunity. Which finally worked and stopped the abuse.
But at what cost, hours and hours of miserable thinking and going over and over all possibilities. First I would consider just disappearing, then I would think that was a stupid plan, because I would surely not be better off being only 13. Running away did not seem to be a good option. But if it had seemed like the only option, I have no doubt I might have tried to put this plan into action, as many times as I considered it as a way out.
I did eventually run away from Boulder and have hardly ever returned except for a very few days at a time. My niece had asked me to come up there for a writer's workshop in October but after this flashback I called and told her I could not come this year. I had to plan way ahead of time. Getting older and with a little less strength.
The last time I went up there some bad things happened associated with the past and the outlaws. This is what I had to try to prevent by having something so big and positive happening that it could counter anything negative. I felt this would be a play, and my niece agreed. I felt my son and she both needed to study me and the past through doing this play, Happy Hello, Sad Goodbye, which I wrote more than 50 years ago. It is flavored with all I had experienced up there good and bad. The threatening stranger comes and the young girls must keep something bad from happening with him. The spirits are on guard, trying to help protect the girls. The mountain is haunted.
I went down and told Doc about it the next day and told him I had not been able to turn to him because he was too drunk. At first he was sneery about me going to the other man's door and knocking and asking for help, and said he was now my boyfriend. I said no, he isn't. That is not the right response from you. It is your fault I cannot talk to you in the afternoon. He kept calling me all day to see if I was all right, because he knows enough about my past to take serious some kind of flashback.
My niece who majored in psychology and was a counselor in high school suggested I should try to find more sources of help, but I told her at this level of medicare there are no good talk therapists. There is only drug therapy. I have tried to get those therapists before from time to time. Talk therapy is very expensive and a basic lower level plan is not going to pay for it. There just isn't enough money, so I have always had to find talented people who could handle complex problems. Doc has been one, but limited by his own addiction. This was one reason I was so upset at the other man's suicidal plunge off a cliff so to speak into his brand of alcoholism, far more lethal faster than Doc's brand.
So it will take me a few more days to get back to normal. In the meantime I am going to let other younger stronger people analyze Michael Jackson's life. This is something I don't need to do. I think we all had a reaction to his relatively sudden death too young. And as there was with Elvis and others, there will be books written about him for some years to come, people who knew him who want to add more to the information already known. And in time we will get a more complete picture. I read where his father is suspicious that he met with foul play. So there needs to be these studies of what really happened to satisfy all those who have questions about different aspects of his life.

Prnce from Saturn gets 15 years to life for child molesting (Update on play)

Dante to go to California by way of El Paso

Dan will be pleased to know I met up with Angelina and Dante last night to give them funds sent by him for their trip to Blythe, and was relieved to find out Dante's uncle was coming clear to Phoenix to pick Dante up to accompany him to Texas to visit relatives before ending back up in California for a few weeks summer vacation. Angelina's beautiful little children were with them, goodness sakes, some people's kids are so gorgeous. Her little boy with her big eyes is now rivaling Dante in striking looks, and the little 2 year old girl is as pretty as he is handsome. Angelina says in August she will take her little kids and go to California for a big family reunion.
I have not been able to talk to my daughter Ronda yet, but I was so glad that Nigel assured the two dancers who had to go home last night from So you think you can dance they will still be able to go on the tour. All the dancers are so good I have fallen in love with every one of them. Now I think this is a show that is doing so much good in America, getting people excited about dancing. What could be better for their physical well being as well as for their desires to create?
All of us sisters grew up dancing. Our country dances were such wonderful occasions of creativity and joy. I have so many memories of great dancers dazzling the crowds of watchers. That was their time to shine, and if you could keep up with them, yours, too. I will never forget Vallen Veater with the twinkling toes, and my excitement one night on being asked to dance a fast one with him. (I found out I could not dance doubletime) He danced twice as fast as anybody else and his fingers were just as fast on the guitar. He formed a band and played on weekends in his spot for years. Then there was Gordon, who was Dean's younger half brother, the best dancer in a family of talented people. He was gentle and good-looking, too, and so modest despite being so popular on the dance floor with the girls. Dean, my ex-husband, was never as good a dancer. His singing was what was phenomonal, and he lived to take a turn with the band. They did not allow just anybody to sing. You had to be good.
Which all goes to show that talent can find a way anywhere, even in small country towns nobody from the outside world ever heard of. And I, of course specialized in giving readings and later on writing plays. I know you are going to love my sisters' blogs, Vooman's Voice, and Kanyonlandking because they are both poets. So far Ann has written all her entries in poetry. I think that's delightful. She just posted a stunning photograph too of the 'forest creatures' as a header. You will love it. Ann was and still is the great hiker of the family, while LaRae, who passed on, was the ledge climber, going where no other girls dared to go. She specialized in daring feats. Linda walked on her hands, and my son Raymond could not wait to turn himself into a hand walker.
Now the children and grandchildren try to figure out how to surpass the old gals in their endeavors, so it is a lot of fun to watch them go.

PS Even though I loved my banner I took it off because some with dial-up were having trouble uploading my blog. Connie is always so up on the latest graphic feats. Well, it's time to get ready and go to breakfast down to Doc's. Up and at 'em!

Busy talking to family yesterday

Above photo is on the road in Boulder.
Yesterday was my grandson Ethan's birthday, but his mother must have been working one of her long nurse's shifts so I did not get to talk to him. I watched So You Think You Dance last night which is hers and my favorite tv show, so we will have to discuss that one of these days, probably on her way to dance. Last 4th of July weekend she was busy with the annnual dance convention held in Phoenix every year to one of the resorts.
Next I talked to Angelina, Dante's mother, who is going to take Dante to Blythe this evening to meet up with a relative driving there from the Los Angeles area to pick him up for the next month or so summer vacation. My son Dan was transferring some funds for the trip, so I could give her the money. I agreed to cash the birthday check Doc gave Dante. She said Dante had a nice birthday celebration on the 28th of June.
Son Dan called who has been very busy up to Boulder doing the tech part of Raymond's one man show, which also includes moving the set from one place to another. Raymond just posted a new entry in his blog Cowboys and Bohemians on my list saying he had booked the show as a dinner theater event to the Kiva Koffeehouse down on the Escalante River, a very beautiful spot. He is saying now that moving the set around is considerable work!
But they are still looking for places to book it. And also getting ready for the Festival weekend after next.
I called son Gary to find him now living in a motel. He moved from his daughter's and is looking for a house. I thank goodness for cell phones or I could not keep up with my kids for sure. Now no matter where they go it is with their handy cell phones by their sides. Gary was happy because he still hadn't smoked yet! What the doctor thought was the most important thing to do for his heart, stop smoking! He is still planning to take a day off and drive up to Utah for the festival.
I talked to my niece Cheryl who proposed the idea of me coming up in October to Boulder for a Writer's Workshop the Festival is sponsoring. I have been getting Utah fever which happens every summer when I hear about the rest of the family arriving there for fun, hiking, family reunions, etc.
Sister Ann's family just met there at their family cabin up in King's Pasture. They brought ATV's and a good time was had by all. She reported she went down to visit my sons in Dean's old trailer. My son Dan joined the family for icecream up to my niece Camille's ice cream place. She has a motel, too, and gift shop where Dan is putting in a few hours to help her out.
My son Raymond found the need to establish an AA chapter in Boulder. He says he can't conquor his alcohol addiction unless he has one of those going. I don't think Gary has sworn off beer. One thing at a time and right now his top priority is cutting out cigarettes.
So you can tell there is a lot of action going on in Boulder. Weekend after next a whole passle of relatives will be headed for Boulder and the festival. Motels are booked. Some have jobs like running an auction and cooking for the dutch oven feast that has become a tradition. All the relatives who will and can cook a dish, which they sell to the crowd on the last evening of the Festival. There is nothing like dutch oven cooking in Boulder! They are looking forward to seeing Gary, glad he is alive. He says he feels pretty good, so they must have pretty much caught his heart attack in time.
Sister Ann and her husband Tom had to make a quick trip to the eye clinic in St. George as he started having leakage in the back of one eye, and an expert doctor must perform some sort of laser surgery on him. She has not reported back on the family site yet.
My sister Margie called me Sunday to thank me for her birthday book (it arrived early) and tell me family news I may not have heard about. I am always grateful for family calls. I see my sister Linda has reported on one of her fascinating dreams tonight, in Vooman's Voice on my blog list. In this entry a woman asked her to give her advice about a business venture she and her partner were thinking of taking a chance on. Linda said she would try to dream about it, and remarkably she did, and the woman said that her advice from the dream was right on, warning them the venture was not a good thing! This is the kind of dreaming Linda can do. She is certainly a professional dreamer. If you are interested in dreams, her blog is your cup of tea.
I have those kind of dreams, too, but not so frequently. For example a few days ago I was dreaming about my sister Margie and her husband Floyd it seemed like the whole night, which told me something was going to happen with them that affected me, and sure enough she called with a whole bunch of news that kept me calling Utah all afternoon! In fact, Raymond just called back today, as I had to leave a message for him to call, and he assured me he was okay. We discussed our panic attacks. I used to call either him or Gary to talk me down from one. If they weren't available I would usually go to emergency for a while. I would even take the bus there. I knew they wouldn't let me die while I was in there, so I could relax.
You can see I have a large family to keep up with! I hope I haven't left any news untold. Oh yes, my first cousin Sue in Richland Washington who has cerebral palsy also developed numb hands like my sister Linda still waiting for an MRI after months of numb hands. Sue got her MRI and the doctor told her the fusion in her neck was old and worn out, causing pressure on her nerves and numb hands, and he told her she needed to retire from work on disability. She is 56, and has been such a hard worker all these years. Her boss did not even know she was deaf she reads lips so wonderfully well. My Aunt Vesta became a teacher of the handicapped so she could be sure she learned skills to carry her through life. An RH factor caused her to be deprived of oxygen. They had to take all her blood out and replace it with new, but didnt do it in time to prevent the cerebral palsy. Her brother had to have the same thing, but they were in time. The wonders of modern science! Without those procedures neither would have survived! I so admire my cousin Sue for her courage and perseverence being so independent. Has she ever earned her disability benefits! She is wonderful. Photo below is a meeting of the clan in the aspens of King's Pasture where the deer roam freely and mountain air is so fresh!