III- Gerry saves alien Doc too brilliant for this earth

Being the self appointed therapist to a suffering genius alien like Doc is no small task. He is his own worst enemy and does not recognize me as his benefactor. As an alien, he has failed to integrate himself on earth.

II- Gerry muffs chance to see extraterrestrial

I- Gerry, UFOs, and near death experiences

What better day than Halloween to launch off my new 3 part series on the UFO experience. You know what, judging from my first near death experience, I think we might be the extraterrestrials on earth with the space traveler within we know as a spirit, which zooms off into space when released from the body at death. I remember being so impatient with the slow ponderous pace of bodies, and I often had flying dreams in which I would launch off into space and fly around a while for my own entertainment. Did you?

Are we selling our country to finance our wars?

The fact that our national debt is growing larger every day worries me immensely. As a country I think this indicates we have been living beyond our means for some time. Or more to the point, we have been fighting a war we could not afford. The war in Iraq I believe came out of panic and paranoia over 9/11. What to do, who to punish? This was a puzzle that would have confounded any president. Our president, unfortunately, had a thing about Iraq because his father fought the Gulf war with Hussein and decided not to march to Bagdad when he was winning. I think Bush senior had gotten extremely sensitive to the criticism he had received over that war. I remember well all the justifications he brought before us for saving Kuwait's oil from whatever nefarious thing Saddam Hussein might do with it. It seemed like a good time to stop the war when Kuwaiti oil had been secured again, to be owned by the Kuwaitis who had it in the first place.

But that is neither here nor there. The point is you have to stop and think when you want to go to war if you can afford it, because modern war is very expensive. I remember Bush saying that as our commander in chief it was up to him to decide whether the security of our country was at stake, which he thought it was with Iraq in possession of WMD. Even had Hussein had some sort of weapon of mass destruction, to march on Iraq was a preemptive strike. I suppose Bush had jumped ahead in his mind and imagined a scenario where Hussein who hated us over the Kuwaiti war would suddenly drop the bomb on a US target and he would be to blame for not stopping him. But a president's paranoia after 9/11 could cause him to make a serious mistake. He not only had to continue with the war on Afganistan which he hastily claimed had been won (even though Osama ben Ladin was still at large) he now had to finance an even bigger and more costly war. To do that he was going to have to borrow money. Did not Bush understand that to finance his war he was going to have to sell the country back home more or less to the highest bidder?

I guess he did not understand high finance, so this did not bother him enough to think again and again. Naturally other countries want to buy the United States. It is not their fault that we have no idea what it is to be owned by the money men. They have been willing to help us go into the deepest deficit we have yet experienced, and this is not even a major war to most of us, because no attack on the US was actually perpetuated by Iraq. Bush told us he was saving us from sure attack, but it was obvious intelligence had not been good when no WMDs were found in any holes in the ground, caves, or anywhere else. It seems that the aging Hussein had just not got around to making any WMDs since idle threats terrified the presidents of the United States so effectively.

Bush ran amok with our promises to pay for others to finance this war, like a man pursued by demons. But being the president of the United States is a big job, and some men are just not up to making good decisions about all that it entails. War is a serious thing, and even if it is a mistake, it is so costly in manpower as well as war equipment nobody wants to contemplate the fearful idea that it might not even have been a good idea. I mean that the war is a dreadful drain on our finances and the longer we spend humongous amounts of money in Iraq, the more those who lend us the money for it are going to be in control of us in some degree for years to come. Somebody has to pay for war, and if we have gone to borrowing money to pay for it, what kind of price will we have to pay for our indebtedness? Our government has been as fiscally irresponsible as anybody in the private sector could possibly be, thinking war will get paid for somehow because they are necessary. Not all wars!

I remember being very worried about the deficit World War II had run up. Everybody was worried, and we had been attacked by Japan and Hitler was over running Europe. It seemed like we had to go to war. I think the fact that we came back from that huge deficit caused present presidents to think that war could always be paid for. If you will remember, the war in Vienam became a quagmire in which we were pouring an astronomical amount of money, and even after ten years commanders were calling for even more troops if any progress was to be made. I always thought that war was a mistake, the whole reasoning behind it. If we did not go to war over Vietnam the communists would take over. We did and ten years of very expensive war fare later we still had to let that happen. Now nobody even seems to know or care what it did to the world when the communists controlled Vietnam. After all the bombing and all the blood shed. Now if our young people said what was that all about we would be hard put to give them a sensible answer.

A lot of mistakes have been made by men too eager to go to war. Let us face it, some men like war games, and I am sure a nation of video game players making war for years on their computers might produce some more men that will think making real war might be a lot more fun. Will we then blow ourselves up, let alone have trouble paying for old wars? This could get worse. If McCain should lose, as far as war goes, that might be a good thing. He seems too fond of war, unfortunately. There is a bright side to anything that happens. Let us hope that the winner can add and subtract better than our present commander in chief.

"Gem of the Ocean," August Wilson play a great afternoon of theater...

My friend Joyce, in the photo, gave me a free ticket to this play which turned out to be a grand outing, of the sort I just love. The Black Theater Company is now housed in the lovely theater space in the Viad Building just up the street. The grounds are so beautiful. Joyce was considered for one of the roles in the play, written by the tremendous black playwright who has had so many hit plays on Broadway. A company that would take on the challenges of this play deserves a good review, because everyone possible should see it. I think Joyce would have been stupendous in the role. The younger woman who took on the part of a woman who says she is 375 years old, something like that, had all she could handle trying to capture the depth of an older woman. I couldn't help but wish that they had gone with Joyce because she deserved this part, but the guy who played the older man who was her love interest was a younger man, too. He performed an older man well, but that was just it, he had to perform the age as did the actress, neither were that age, as Joyce is, who has one of the most remarkable memories I have encountered in actresses. This was a big part and she might have done something absolutely stunning with it, she has now had so much experiences on the stage.
I have seen nearly everyone of her performances, and I kept thinking of how she would have said this magnificent speech and that one. Joyce has a wonderful voice for the stage, too, deep and resonant. I thought with the exception of one or two some of the performers were having trouble breaking up the sing song rhythms they fell into of this musical playwright's dialogue. They were having trouble at first especially getting into the lower registers of their voices where emotion can resonate much better than in the higher tones. But one expects flaws in a play production. Not everything can be perfect, but the performers you could tell loved what they were trying to portray, so altogether it was just a remarkable afternoon of theater. Thank you, Joyce, as always for thinking of me and giving a very valuable gift.

When you love horses

I call this horse "Noble Spirit." Connie sent me some horse graphics that I just love. We found out we share a mutual love of the horse. Horses saved my sanity when I was growing up. I could not have survived without them. Where I lived a good horse often saved a wayward man, gave him stability and incorruptible companionship. I appreciated my father's great cow horse, Sorly, so much for what he did for my father. He represented my father at his best, he was a truly noble horse. http://windsweptwhispers.blogspot.com/ is where you will find Connies Creations.

I cannot stop blogging about politics until election!

Folks, you will have to bear with me as the election heats up toward the end. I must blog about politics, inspite of the fact that my creative partner Doc withdrew from the race. I am afraid he means from the race of life. The photo of him reminds me of one you might put on a memorial service program. This photo is going to make me cry when he is gone.
But enough of that. Here is my political blog I posted in my other blog on the Arizona Republic blog site.

AZ Republic appears to second guess support of McCain-Palin ticket

The editorial page columnists this morning bemoaned the campaign of McCain and Palin as sunk to a new low in a display of conservative power. Such a pessimistic view of McCain's political strategy seems premature. Wait until the election is over I say. I think the main thrust of people who go to the polls toward the end will tell us what this election has been all about more than anything. The early voters are generally going to be eager for change. Those who vote last are going to be pondering the complexities right up until they mark that ballot.

Let us rememember in 1973 the country was forced to take a giant swing to the left by the actions of the Supreme Court, and conservatives have been trying to figure out how to swing it back ever since. In this swing to the left the relatively new working and voting women were shanghaiid by leftist thinkers. I have just been reading a book about Emma Goldman, a Jewish woman, who came from Russia to become the first famous woman anarchist. Reading her history of abuse by male figures, including her father and husband as well as authority figures in power, I can understand why she was tempted by this philosophy. I remember being bossed around by so many male figures of authority that anarchist was a sweet word to me, too, at one time. Until the anarchists showed they meant business with violence, as Emma did with a bomb, and then I backed off. I thought, no, I can't be an anarchist, and in 1973 the violence of the legalized abortion solution turned me off then, too. I thought no, I can't be pro choice.

McCain is contending with a liberal press that is finding extreme violence in everything he or his running mate say or do about war while they are overlooking the violence in their own philosophies, namely pro choice. I am against war as too violent in most cases. I concede that the attack on the twin towers was so savage that retaliation was human, but there was still too much of a warrior in our President and quite possibly in McCain to contain our war actions to what we could afford without breaking the country.

So over zealous warriors have contributed to the day of financial reckoning we are experiencing, but wait a minute. I have been uneasy for years with many presidents who exhorted the public to get out there and spend so our economy would be 'healthy.' Now suddenly we are faced with the realization that we have embraced the philosophy of spending until it got us into serious trouble. I have certainly done my part in trying to buy enough stuff to stave off a crash. My closet is full of clothes. I purchased at least 20 pairs of shoes, where I used to get by with 2 or 3 pairs. Every senior I know has filled up their apartments with geegaws from the dollar stores, stuff from the thrift stores, and even new stuff from the retail stores they could ill afford. I have tried to keep Mervyns from growing broke even though it is still is. Family members borrowed money on their equity in their houses until they could no longer work hard enough to pay the mortgage. They were getting old and lost their jobs and now they might lose the house. They are only a mortgage payment away from foreclosure. They claim they were told to do this as well to keep the economy 'heatlhy.'

So now hundreds are broke or severely hurting and they tend to blame whoever is in office. We are fretting about Palin's new wardrobe costing $150,000 and an old lady at the bus stop told me the other day that Cindy McCain paid $350,000 dollars for one dress! I saw this infamous dress in the paper. We did not care if she was a multi-millionairess she was surely not helping her husband convince people he is frugal minded enough to win this election. Conservative talk show hosts like Limbaugh were ranting and raving about Michelle Obama buying lobster and Iranian caviar when the country is hurting so badly, and that story turned out to be false. I am wondering what she did order from room service, if anything, and just how much it cost. We surely don't expect her to quit eating, do we? Or go to a bread and water diet.

So we have been told by past presidents to do a lot of foolish things that now look as though they were a sure recipe for disaster. In fact, I hear this is a tsunami of a financial crash. I still say we must be patient until the votes are all in and counted, and then we can more accurately analyze just what happened. Let us not paint such a dark picture before we have reason. McCain and Palin might have a respectable showing of support after all, one we can build on.

Doc withdraws from the presidential race

Being outtalked by his woman opponent, me, so badly (he did not get a word in edgewise) is I believe the reason Doc is announcing his withdrawal from the race. People act like I don't give him a chance to talk. People, he is drunk. That is why he doesn't speak up. He can't marshall his thoughts. My next video will be "Doc is the worst drunk in America." I figure if he won't quit drinking, I can document his fall from a 160 I.Q. to about 80. Maybe I will at least learn something about why he continues on this path.

AZ Republic supports John McCain in Viewpoints today

I was gratified to read an editorial of strong support for McCain in a newspaper I have been reading ever since I came to Arizona over 35 years ago. The newspaper has always been important in my family. I grew up reading a newspaper, and I believe that the daily newspaper should always exist to serve a number of purposes in a community. The Garfield County News in Utah was even an important weekly newspaper for me that often printed the most trenchent and to the point letters of any newspaper I have read. I did not know when I went to college whether I wanted to be a journalist or a playwright. I finally chose theater as my major, but I have never stopped reading the newspapers and writing my opinions about what they print. I think letters to the editor are a barometer of how the public is responding and should be encouraged by the editors.

I was absolutely determined to register letters of protest in the years after Roe vs Wade when I perceived a leftist swing in the editorial pages of the Republic which purported to be republican but did not put out an editorial page that supported that claim. Time and time again editors of the editorial page declared themselves to be 'pro choice,' following the examples of prominent republicans who came out as pro choice, notably Ronald Reagan. Reagan as you will remember began his political life as a democrat but switched to republican which might explain how he became president, by pleasing both parties with his ideology. In the beginning republicans were almost as nervous about declaring themselves pro life as democrats continue to be.

I voted for McCain because I have seen too much evidence of Obama accepting the hard line on abortion of some democratic leaders like Pelosi and Hillary, mainly that abortion should remain a woman's right to choose, meaning its nobody else's business if she chooses to conceive and then destroy her own fetus. It's not a baby yet! Semantics. Semantics.

It can be said that abortion is a woman's issue since it is primarily affecting her. It's pretty hard for a man to make a woman have an abortion. So I understand why the Viewpoints editor barely mentioned the abortion issue in passing in his editorial this morning, but I don't approve of it I think everyone is going to have to get a lot more passionate about the subject before we can do anything about the astomomical number of abortions each year in this country, over a million and .2 to .3 and .4.

My main reason for voting for McCain is because he courageously discussed the issue whenever it was brought up, which was not often by a defensive pro choice media. Who do you know in the media who comes out forthrightly against legalized abortion? Practically nobody. McCain also picked a pro life running mate. Unfortunately I think republican advisors muzzled her so severely on this subject she could not show her full strength. I hear she has thrown off some of their restraints and they are calling her a 'rogue'! A rogue? They are the ones who do not understand that constantly telling another how to talk, think, present themselves, is taking away their rights. This kind of muzzling is what has turned so many male politicians safe, predictable, boring, and ultimately powerless.

Readers have said I am obsessed with fighting legalized abortion, but every one of the issues that the Viewpoints editorial mentions is being worked on by hundreds of problem solvers--taxes, mortgages, economy, the war, but the important issue that is always ignored is legalized abortion, showing we still have a big capacity in this country to ignore a terrible law if we do not think it affects us personally. That's how we ignore over a million deaths a year of the unborn. Women need to run for president. Men don't seem to be able to get a handle on this subject. I believe that Sarah Palin will inspire a whole lot of other young women to enter politics, who will grasp what is so important about this issue, which is to save lives and convince women that no child should ever be conceived if aborting it for birth control reasons is going to be an option. Untrammeled sex is irresponsible and self indulgent if that is the result.

McCain we know does not accept muzzling, so he sometimes comes across as a forever dissatisfied and angry man. But he is his own man. I know he will stand by Palin no matter what others say about her. He has given her a wonderful opportunity to develop as a great woman politician, and I believe that no matter the outcome of the election she has no where to go but up. She is a welcome presence on the political scene, and we owe her emergence to John McCain who did not feel as threatened by her lack of experiences as her distractors.

Whitley Striber talks about UFOs on KFYI

Last night I connected again with Whitley Striber who you may remember has written a number of books on his experiences with aliens, both in memoir and novel form. He was on a show called Coast to Coast AM which has taken the place of the old Art Bell show,'Dreamland.' I was so enthralled with this show I listened to it with rapt attention for 5 hours before I just finally fell asleep. Whitley was a guest host for George Noori and he has not been on for years. This show was everything you could want--Whitley and his wife Ann were so gracious, enthusiastic and interested in their callers' stories as were their two guests. One guest, a Dr. Lear has operated on about 15 people for UFO implants! The other was named Frank Shashino, something like that, I could not catch his name, but he has a website called FlatswoodMonster.com, has researched many UFO sightings including this one in Flatswood, I believe West Virginia.
Anyway, Dr. Lear took out an implant that was impossible for any lab he took it to to break down and analyze, except that some of the material in it resembled that in meteors! Whitely revealed that he was again visited by UFOs before 2000 and an implant was put in his ear, which later traveled from one part of his ear down to the lobe. He said he was scared to death to have something in his body that could travel like that, but ex-rays revealed that it had little appendages that helped it to navigate in the body! Spooky! Whitley says so far he has kept his implant because he wants to see what happens, why they have put it there and what they expect to learn.
Dr. Lear said they also try to go to the living quarters of those who have implants he has removed (15 cases so far) to see if there is evidence around the dwelling of UFO visitation. In this last man's apartment all the kitchen silverware was magnetized as well as those instruments made of wood and plastic. The wheels on his car were magnetized and those on a boat sitting in his driveway. A section of the wall was taken to a lab to be analyzed because under ultra violet light two handprints that looked to be about the size of a child's hand were detected. They are hoping they will be able to take DNA off these handprints to try to learn more about the creature who made them.
If I remember right the man told them that about 6 to 8 small grays were involved, that is those with the big oval eyes, and also a large gray was mentioned. He said that in many abductions and implant stories, these grays are described as being there. Whitley saw the grays clear back as a child when he was visited.
They also said something last night that gave me a very exciting breakthrough thought in my own experiences of UFOs which are much more limited than Whitley's. But Whitley mentioned that he thought UFOs might be connected to us someway as one was reported saying to a man that his brother who had died about a week before in an automobile accident was okay, not to worry about him!
This led me to remember a near death experience in which my being was revealed in the body, the spirit so called, which traveled in a matter of seconds hundreds of miles an hour into space! I could feel myself zooming through space, and the journey was so exciting, like I was going to a place I had been before and I was going to see people I knew. Then I was jerked back out of the sky into my body, probably when some life saving oxygen was administered. I had gone into shock after a tonsilectomy at the age of 15.
I had a dream after that about someone I knew who had terminal cancer. I dreamed that she was about ready for the 'space journey' and I saw the little space ship in which she was going to travel to the beyond, almost like a second skin. When my sister was dying I also wrote a play about her visit to Phoenix when she had terminal cancer. She came bald from her cancer treatments, so when the alien appeared who had come to see and honor her in my play, he was also bald, dressed in a spaceship and his name was Blue. You could see the lights of the UFO outside the building. He was talking to her about death which he said was not really death but a space journey and her spirit would be the space being, once the body 'died'. He told her she was about ready for the 'space journey' and how to prepare for it. A large cast of family members and friends gathered in the play to meet Blue and visit the space ship so they would know more about how she was going to leave the earth. He revealed that everyone makes the 'space journey' when they die. She reported a dream not long before she died where she fled to the top of a building, fleeing murderers. There was no escape, so she reasoned that by now she should have grown her 'wings' so she dived out into space and flew away!
My sister was an intrepid climber and used to dive off the cliffs at Lake Powell. So I figured 'the space journey' would not frighten her that much. She had too much nerve.
So what if we are part of an experiment that is more real than we imagine, and we are coming from some other place through the 'life' that begins at conception to inhabit the earth for a certain amount of years. That this space being may come in our 'DNA.' What also triggered off this thought was the fact that there was material in these implants Whitley told us about that was biological in nature, like what human beings are made of! This was baffling and still is to these pioneer researchers who say that there is still almost universal denial by governments and a lot of people that the UFO phenomenon is real! Whitley thinks that is why the aliens went to implanting objects in people's bodies, so that evidence of their having been there could not be denied. They want us to know they are real. He said he also got a message from them that said 'if you can bear it, you can take what we are into your minds so to speak.' Many of the callers who had had such experiements talked about how traumatic it was to have a visitation.
Whitley gave them advice on how to handle it. He believes that not remembering is a way for the mind to try to escape the intensity and strangeness of the encounter. He said when we encounter the unexpected fear and upset are natural. He also conceded that there is a dark side to UFO phenomona as happens when aliens of every kind try to make contact, and they may be just like people on earth, some benign and some violent. He does not regret having the encounters because he does believe that we need to try to wrap our minds about such things! Could an encounter be anymore traumatic to a person than the dying experience? We come into the world with pain and struggle, and we leave the world with pain, struggle and fear.
I know we do because every single one of us is going to make that space journey some day. I know I am, and it is hard to fathom right now that one of these days, "Blue" will come for me and some way or another I will be flying off into space. It may be that is what does not die in us, that which comes from space and is our consciousness in this machine called a body designed for earth living that falls apart after so many years until it becomes useless and non functional in some vital way.
I listened from 10pm to 2am and not a minute when I was not riveted. In a way it was like hearing about my future space journey! I want to know more.

Gerry and Doc run for president!

Warning: view at your own risk. There may be a few laughs in this video but there are also a lot of serious concerns by the candidate of the green outfit party. She will tell you what her green party stands for in no uncertain terms. She warns against voting for her opponent as he tries to appear sober and responsible. Judge for yourself whether he succeeds.

Signs of a big election participation means people care this year

I don't know whether to be super excited about the big interest in voting this year but I think every time America decides to vote it is a good thing. Doc and I spent the day doing a video about the two of us deciding to run for president We are announcing our decision and presenting our platforms. We finally got one we both could live with and it is on its way up to Youtube right now. I will be able to download it on this blog tomorrow.
I was happy that Sheria was able to respond to my objections to the democratic party's platform for choice without anger, even though I know she feels passionately about this issue. If we can all just manage to talk about the issues and different solutions without going to war with each other it will be a plus. She mentions some very important points for anyone to consider who wants to see the decision overturned when Roe vs Wade went to the Supreme Court, which in my opinion would result in far less deaths under the states' jurisdiction. I think the legalized abortion experiment across the land has been a mistake because the deaths are too high, and it has encouraged people to use it for birth control. That to me is not humane.
I do feel that every time people feel pressure from a rising population they are tempted to seek violent solutions. If man turns to violence that means he has essentially given up on the solutions from a higher power which would eliminate bloodshed. Legalized abortion was practiced heavily in China and Russia before the rest of the so called civilized nations adopted it to control the burgeoning population of the poor mainly, is my belief. The people who favored it were in too big of hurry to develop more civilized solutions to such problems. Maybe they were too savage to believe in them. If you read Chinese or Russian history, after their revolutions the communist party became responsible for large numbers of the adult populations being exterminated, as well.
The price we have paid for advances in medical science is longer lives. To those who hate a challenge, perhaps that is something that can't be tolerated without the option of pro choice, which means don't interfere if your nieghbor wants to abort her child, but my view on this was always that only a desperate woman considers abortion, and what society needed to do was support the non violent solution. Yes, that has to be done in every way, and it was being done before Roe vs Wade We had years and years of trying to make society more supportive of pregnancy so women would not seek back alley abortions or resort to the infamous 'coat hanger' to cause their own abortions. I always thought that society needed to take some responsibility for every abortion that happened in those days.
Now these support systems have been greatly weakened after 35 years of legalized abortion. It is as though we are pointing the way to the abortion clinic for desperate women. If we create a society where so many women are going to have causing the deaths of their own offspring on their consciences, we are doing a disservice to those women. Laws help women not to resort to such upsetting acts. Good laws tell women that society recognizes violence is not a good solution, so laws need to exist to help people not to commit violence. Abortionists should not be sanctioned by law, people who profit from the deaths of our own offspring. This should give anybody pause. And if we do not allow abortionists then we will be expected to provide other kinds of help to desperate women in order to save their children just as we did in this country for decades. We knew we had to provide support and many caring people were involved in providing support. Churches have provided sanctuaries for centuries for the desperate. We have to see the full picture. I was 42 years old before Roe vs Wade so I saw what was in place in those days, and how rapidly these services weakened with legalized abortion, until we are aborting children who wouldn't even be conceived if abortion weren't legal. That is how bad this law is. It encourages abortion, that is all there is to it, and if the numbers do not convince what will? I thought we still had a long ways to go in providing good outcomes of these kinds of problems. We needed to tackle them in all kinds of ways. Death is the most primitive solution possible, the one where the least thought is required, the one that says we are giving up on progress without killing.

Review of "The Agitator's Daughter" in honor of Sheria who lost her mother September 15...

This book was written by Sheryll Cashin, an African American who also had an Irish ancestor. She is a professor of law at Georgetown University who also writes about racism. As does Sheria whose blog is "The Examined Life" taken from a quote from Socrates--her link is: http://theexaminedlife-sheria.blogspot.com/ I, too, believe in the examined life.
This book is a very honest book that is mostly focused on the author's father, 'the agitator', Dr. John Cashin who was a firebrand when it came to civil rights. He was fighting for civil rights in the days when Martin Luther King was murdered as were 4 little black girls in a Birmingham church, killed by pure racism in its most evil form. Her mother, who followed along in her husband's footsteps, was jailed for her attempts to desegregate so much of what was segregated in those days. I remember being so affected by the murders of men like Medger Evans who were putting themselves out there on the line of fire to free their people from bondage freeing the slaves had generated, suppression in many forms. Dr. Cashin and his wife helped desegregate schools, housing developments, restaurants, they helped people get past all the barriers that had been erected to stop their progress in the reconstruction to vote. Just plain vote as racists had cut back the numbers of black people voting to almost none in some places. Oh there was so much to fight for still, even after a terrible civil war.
Now Sheria is talking about how excited she and her mother were to have Obama win as the democratic nominee. In her latest post she explains her objections to people who are not going to vote for Obama because of their fears of what he is, what will happen to the country which she believes are racist reasons.
With increasing sorrow, I have had to conclude that the one reason I could not support Obama was because he is the nominee of the democratic party which has come to be the party of legalized abortion. I have to explain that I think legalized abortion had its origins in racism. I became almost complete disabled because of my childhood and my decision to become an activist in college and I had to go on welfare in my forties, with 2 children still needing support.
There I encountered over and over the virulent hatred many people had for those on welfare. I would hear white men castigating the lazy ne'er do wells who did not want to work, never admitting that minorities in this country had no chance to land good paying jobs because of racial prejudice. The job situation has improved, but racial prejudice has not ended by any means. Hated worst of all was how they spawned a child every year to keep from working who would then end up on welfare, knowing nothing else, the most worthless of human beings.
I am still trying to explain to some people what disability means and that it is real, and I also believe that if you throw too many obstacles in anyone's path it will eventually affect their very will to live and be a good responsible member of society.
It is not a very big leap from hating children on welfare to coming up with legalized abortion that would entice these women to stop having so many children for society to take care of. You might say women who aborted their children were patted on their heads by approving welfare reformers, the ruthless who thought the earth was getting far too populated with the ignorant offspring of the minorities or poor white trash like myself.
What was most insidious was how legalized abortion was tied to the better educated, which was one way the higher institutions of learning got to be so distrusted by the students during the sixties. I was simply a forerunner of those protesting students. I knew there could be corruption in high places like universities just because there was so much to be gained with a degree. A degree very often does not measure the most elusive aspects of integrity.
Which was how highly educated women came to be some of our most articulate and determined abortion advocates. Now remember, I was down on welfare, living in one of the most violent neighborhoods one can imagine, with constant gun fire, murders, gang wars. There are worst ghettoes, but not many. My neighbors in my HUD complex were mostly Mexican and black, no whites that I recall. I did not have a degree. I was taken from my university, under guard, thrown into a psych ward, and would have been given electric shock (they all got it) had I not nearly died first. I recieved a degree all right, in student activism. I could never have gotten a degree at that university because I made a pledge to myself to speak the truth in my classes.
You don't speak the truth in your classes as I found out, or you will be thought mad. You go along. You give the professors what they want. That happens all too often with higher education, which is why I hardly trust anybody.
Nobody can convince me with a degree, they have to convince me with their actions.
If black people recognize that one of the big reasons people became such believers in legalized abortion is they saw it as a solution to curbing the irresponsible births among minorities then perhaps they could accept why I am against it. I experienced the discrimination accorded to white trash on welfare, too. I don't know how many times I have been taken to task for having my children who were born out of wedlock who eventually had to be taken care of by society. My parents were married, which did not stop either one of them from doing bad things. I saw marriage as a trap that could be used against me, because of the terrible difficulty I had in leaving my first husband before he murdered me I was married to him, so I owed him as many years of abuse as I could survive. I wanted the children and I loved them. Then I was simply a forerunner of another rebellion of young people against the fixed notion of marriage. The sanctity of marriage no matter what evils it hid was used against people so they rebelled against the whole idea of marriage.
But anything to cut down the numbers on welfare, even murder? But what if it is explained by highly educated people skilled at spinning fancy words that this is not really killing, well, so on and so forth, I have read all sorts of propaganda created to make women think there is nothing wrong in legalized abortion.
Jane Fonda spoke at the Arizona State University the other day to young women on the subject of pregnancy. This event was sponsored by Planned Parenthood. I can just about guess what kind of sophisticated spin she put on abortion for these women. She and I probably could not disagree more. She has been married to a leftist university radical and was indoctrinated in those years as to how communists control their burgeoning populations. Leftist thinking professors could hardly get fired at a university no matter what they taught if they just had tenure. Which is why you can get corruption anywhere, even at a university. No, you do have to examine everything in life to get at the whole truth.

Dante talks about his dog bite

Tribute to Jewel and her beloved Grand Canyon...

Here is a photo of Jewel who used to hike up and down the Grand Canyon like it was nothing. Well, she died last week after struggling very hard to stay alive after a devastating heart attack several years ago that ruined her lungs at the same time. (She aspirated vomit in to her lungs before the paramedics arrived and they did not realize it) She was not only my sister Ann's best friend, but a friend of the rest of the family, too. She was always so animated and entertaining, we all like to stop to talk to her in her home in Flagstaff on our way to Utah.

Ann was doing one of the nicest things over the weekend, she drove to Flagstaff from her home in Utah to pay homage to her life long friend in her Memorial service at the elementary school where she taught. Well, Jewel will mark the trail for all of us, for sure, as she did for so many of us in the Grand Canyon. Her biggest delight was in talking someone to make that trek with her.

Not many did. But she will be joining an intrepid hiker, my sister LaRae, on the other side. These two women were probably our most fit hikers for many years. My sister LaRae, as a child, would be right there with the boys, making the most daring climbs. Jewel's father, Doyle, was known for his hiking feats, so she followed in his footsteps, literally. Jewel struggled to stay alive for her kids and grandkids whom Ann was able to visit in Flagstaff. She taught many children over the years. She and my sister Ann have that in common. They were both devoted teachers. Yes, they have done their part in making the world a better place. Ann is still tending her grandchildren, I am sure, wondering when she, too, will be taking her last journey up the long long trail.

My thoughts on Saturday...

I feel like I need to sum things up today even though I know many of you are busy with Saturday things to do. I was, too, for a while, having gone to the store to get some soy milk since I was completely out. While there I went across the street and purchased three books that look good, but I will have to put off reading them for a while since I over tired my eyes checking out all the journals I visit on occasion to see if they had migrated, and getting their new links, so I can visit them once again. In fact I had to lay and listen to Talk Radio all evening to rest my eyes. That's what I always used to do when my eyes gave out. Now I have growing cataracts I am going to have to pay attention!

The conservative talk show hosts on KFYI were distinctly acting up. It seems that McCain refused to visit some of the conservative hosts like the one on Savage Nation, and Mr Savage was furious. He was spitting fire because both McCain and Obama went to a dinner hosted in New York by liberals of course and Mr Savage accused McCain of acting just like a liberal, no difference, visiting the talk shows like Lettermen's while ignoring all the conservatives out there in radio land, assuming they would just vote for him even if he ignored them! It seems that McCain got irked at some of the conservatives, and I don't blame him. They were throwing tantrums last night like little kids. Russ Limbaugh acts like he is going to vote for him and is directing his minions to do the same. He kept going on and on about Michelle Obama ordering lobster, Iranian caviar, and champagne in her hotel suite I assume while her husband was to this dinner. I finally got tired of that being made so much of and moved on, despsite the fact Russ just signed a contract worth millions, but he does a commercial every few seconds. I think it is his salesman ship that makes him so popular with sponsors.

I ended up listening a quiet hour or two to the paranormal that they always have late at night on KFYI. The public was calling in and telling stories about seeing spirits. The hosts are very kind and nice and this section was soothing enough to my soul that I was able to drop off to sleep. I well tell just one story that quite struck me. Someone was visiting his friends and he said to them, "who is that old gentleman I just saw outside? He was there, but he went around the corner of the house." They asked questions, and the daughter said that it was her father. He had passed and every one in a while he was seen around the place, but she said, he usually does not come unless something is happening he wants us to know about. The answering service on her phone was flashing its little red light so she checked her messages and there was a frantic call from her doctor warning her not to take any of the medication he had just prescribed to her. It was wrong and could kill her! Who knows. If the friend had not come in saying he had seen her father, she might not have checked the message service before she took the lethal medication she had just brought home!

The photo is of me in a last days of summer outfit looking kind of sleepy. It is still very warm here. You guys would roast. It takes a while for fall to get to Phoenix!

I think McCain won the debate last night!

Above is our latest video where Doc and I are talking about the election what else. The following is about my assessment of the debate last night in relation to an issue I consider very important even if it has been reduced to a non issue many election years. This was copied from my G4Life blog on http://www.azcentral.com and I also wrote a letter to the Arizona Republic which they notified me they have received and may publish. In the meantime they requested I blog about it.

Yesterday I was reading a book about Obama just out called "The Faith of Barack Obama" by Stephen Mansfield which helped me to understand why Obama could call himself a Christian and attend Trinity Church for years and still say he was pro choice. It seems that Reverend Wright also believes in pro choice according to this source! Now that is amazing to me. How a pastor could square a belief in Jesus with legalized abortion, I am not sure.
So last night the monitor finally got to Roe vs Wade and asked both candidates to discuss where they stood. I think this is how McCain clearly won the debate to me. He did not equivocate. He said he would include in the qualifications for a Supreme Court Justice his attitude toward the constitution, because he stated very firmly he did not believe Roe vs Wade was a good decision. I don't think it was a good decision either, because it went where the Supreme Court had never gone before to interfere with the states' previous jurisdiction over abortion rights. If the interference of the Supreme Court was going to legalize abortion across the land, then perhaps that was the best reason for keeping abortion under the states' jurisdiction. The states were going to be closer to the will of the people. What the Supreme Court decision did do besides raise abortion numbers astronomically was cause a very troubling split between the two parties, based on legalized abortion. This you do not want because it puts high pressure on groups traditionally democrat to become pro choice with even the Trinity Church Pastor, Reverend Wright, succumbing. This kind of reminds me of the days of slavery when under obvious pressure from powerful slave owners so many Church Leaders found justification for it and thus made it even more difficult to persuade slave owners good religious people did not enslave other people!
I do not think Obama has been strong enough to give up his aspirations to be president to see his church and his party as wrong on this issue, every bit as wrong as those church leaders and politicians were who embraced slavery. Now we see legalized abortion as too entrenched into our way of life to give it up. Wasn't slavery so well established it took a tragic civil war to end it, and ultimately the assassination of President Lincoln?
You don't help people kill people. That's basically wrong and all the rhetoric in the world will not change it. But people who are inclined to do it and those who are inclined to defend it will make it extremely difficult to change the law. I hate to see a young attractive candidate like Obama succumb to ambition, because his endorsement of pro choice is his Achilles heel. He is his party's hope just as the corrupt Bill Clinton was his party's hope when he ran. It was hoped that people would find his charm and his talents enough to elect him, and those people who did vote for him were clearly going to have to go soft on pro choice, as I did because I voted for him. This time I can't do that, no matter how attractive the candidate may be. I find it ironic to see attractive very successful liberals in the public eye hopping around on this issue, once again threatening to sweep the abortion issue under the carpet, turn it into essentially a non issue. It is always going to be a non issue for those who endorse pro choice, because it takes so much conviction to make it an important issue. It is a tragedy that it is a non issue for so many people. That makes so many people culpable for continuing the practice that is taking over a million lives a year of the unborn.
We will have to be accountable for this somewhere. We can always put off judgment day, and the longer we put it off the more lives will be lost. I have now made up my mind to vote for McCain, tattered warrior that he is, since he offers the most hope to end the slaughter of the innocents.

In "Soul Shift," Mark Ireland teaches us about the spirit world...

In keeping with trying to make the world of spirit more real, I am reviewing Mark Ireland's book called "Soul Shift." Mark Ireland was the co-author of a book about his father, Richard Ireland, world famous Phoenix psychic, called "The Phoenix Oracle." His father is shown with actress Mae West in the photo. This book was written not too long after his father died, and Mark did not do much with the psychic world until after 2004, when a monumental event occurred in his immediate family. As he describes it, it was a Saturday and his youngest son, 18, was going to go on a hike on the McDowell Mountain near their home. Mark had felt uneasy about the projected trip because his son suffered from asthma, but he had done these hikes before and reminded his father that his asthma had improved for at least 3 months due to a new medication and he had hardly been bothered with it at all. They probably both assumed that if he did get into some stress with it, his inhaler would take care of the problem.
As it turned out, he suffered from such a severe attack, hardly even realizing it, that his inhaler did not work at all. He and a friend started back down and he suddenly told his friend that he was seeing light all around them and needed to lie down. Up to then his friend said Brandon had even been joking! Once on the ground he quickly expired. His heart had simply quit from the lack of oxygen. In the meantime another group of hikers who had stopped because one of their members was having trouble with asthma came and immediately called 911 for rescue. It was too late. I remember readng about this sad event in the newspaper, and I was thinking then that Phoenix appeared to have completely forgotten Mark's father, Richard Ireland, who was one of the most amazing psychics I have ever seen. I puzzled for months after seeing his show here in a place on Central Avenue. How could he do what he did I asked myself over and over. This was a case of having trouble believing what I saw him do with my own eyes. I could not help but think that Mark had perhaps turned away from his father's psychic activities so did not perceive how much danger his son was going to encounter in this hike.
So when I saw this book "Soul Shift" at the Phoenix Library today, just out, I got it, as I figured the soul shift phrase referred to what Mark Ireland has experienced after a beloved son died. I am finding the book fascinating, worthy of more comment than I can possibly write here in one session, but I believe that if we in Phoenix even half way understood the amazing feats of Richard Ireland and other psychics we would not have so much trouble believing the spirit is real. In his book Mark Ireland says that his father was probably the most amazing, 'shocking' psychic of the 19th century, and I think he is right. I tried to write about his father in my journal and I thought some of what he did was too shocking to keep revealing. I didn't think readers were going to be able to take it in. I had to conclude that most of us live on a very mundane level, not even realizing how psychics like Richard Ireland were able to move freely between this sphere of reality and that of the spirit.
And he started exhibiting these extraordinary gifts when he was 5 years old, when the nurse found him bouncing a ball against the wall and catching it with his eyes blindfolded that had just been operated on. He explained to her that he could still 'see' the ball. He thought everyone could see as he could. Mark Ireland says that he never saw his father make a mistake when he was reading off the serial numbers of dollar bills audience members would hold in their hands. He could 'see' the numbers blindfolded and on stage. That is what he did the night I saw him. Mark says he used to play games with them and he could 'read' off a whole deck of playing cards blindfolded and never make a mistake. His demonstrations of ESP left audience members who came in skeptics stunned, unable to understand how anyone can do what he did. Then he would go on and startle people with his ability to tell what was going on in their lives in detail. Mark said it was a little disconcerting to have a father that always 'knew' everything. Once he asked Mark what gift he would like for his birthday. Mark told him he would like this certain balsam model airplane, and his father told him to reach up on the shelf, and there this same model was. Richard Ireland had already bought the gift before hearing what his son wanted. Mark says he does not know how he did this, whether he put the idea in his mind or what. Most of us don't have fathers like Richard Ireland.
Yet, he developed an addiction to alcohol, probably from doing his shows in a nightclub setting and being feted and wined and dined by celebrities. After his son died, Mark was able to speak to his father who told him that he felt he had neglected him. So in spite of his great gifts he was just human, too. He had faults and failings. But he had been there to greet his grandson, Brandon, when he passed, and he told Mark that he would look after him, which was a great comfort to him. He said this was a second chance to do for his grandson what he had not done for his son.
I do think our world needs to study and think a great deal more about what happens to us when we die, what happens to anyone, including the ones who have been conceived but are not yet born. There are some amazing stories of people like Richard Ireland whose purpose for being born with such gifts seemed to be to teach the world more about the spirit that does not die.

Victor Victorious and moving right along...

I have to report that I cleaned out my closet, gave away clothes put away summer ones which is very important for someone with as many clothes as I have. I never mentioned I don't think that I also change clothes often to take care of a bladder problem rather than wear depends. I hate depends. Course you do acquire huge washings this way, but I am willing to do the extra labor. After all, I was raised in a primitive area where I had to carry buckets of water from the ditch, heat it in an outside tub, carry it on to the porch to put it in the washer, and wash for 7 people when I was only 10 years old! We had to carry the rinse water the same way. Some hardy souls like my grandmother boiled her whites on the stove before she washed them in the washer. So do you think I think washing now days is a hard job?
No, not at all. I am prone to say people don't know what work is now days, but then I would be wrong. They just work hard other ways. Like on their jobs, for example.

I did get to the thrift store and found this lovely lavender hat for a $1. I just love it, so I promptly put it on this morning with a lavender blouse and modeled it for you. My Aunt Net had beautiful white wavy hair and her best color was lavender. So here is a hat Aunt Net would have adored.

I am happy to report that I have gotten around to a number of the journalists' new blogs. Lisa of Please Dont Take Life For Granted finally made it over after a minor meltdown and guess what she is making her blog entrance more interesting than I am. She is talented that way. Joyce of Treasure Chest of Life has a most inviting front page with an array of photos from one of the other photo places like Photobucket and Flickr. I have not even got all my AOL homepage photos saved back to my computer in case I deleted some I want. Nelishia has learned fast how to embed Youtube which I must learn soon, when I take a notion to make a new video. I call her graphically talented, too, as I am not. She loves handicrafts. My family is loaded with handicrafters but I always resisted their efforts to get me to sew when young, as I didn't think I had enough time to read all that was required to become a great writer.

Raymond is still in town, very busy no doubt meeting with the rather large company of actors who are interested in filming another season of Caffeine.

My sister's best friend Jewel died over the weekend. Ann is preparing to go speak to her services to be held at the school where she taught elementary school. Ann taught high school so they had a lot in common. Jewel was from our home town, and she was so courageous in fighting the chronic disease of Reyaud's as well as the after math of a heart attack, that we all had to stop and pay homage to the passing of a very strong spirit.

I know Ann is thinking oh I better get ready, as she is a severe diabetic without a pancreas and has no idea how long she can last. She is very conscientious about obeying the doctors' orders. She has done very well for the ten years she has been so afflicted. Ann is 8 years younger than I am, which made Jewel's passing a bit of a wakeup call for me, too. People at this age know they have to through the biggest event since being born some time soon, that of passing on to whatever lies ahead. Doc thinks nothing lies ahead, but alcohol causes him to draw a blank. I don't let him influence me. He is just not thinking well.

Jewel was also a friend of my sister LaRae who passed over twenty years ago. I know that she was among the throng to come and greet Jewel, and she will be riding along with my two rather decrepit sisters, Margie and Ann, as they travel to her services. Ann said she is concerned about Margie who is only a year younger than I am as she seems a bit shaky after undergoing surgery to remove a painkiller device from her back. She has had 3 back surgeries and a stroke, and does not know which keeps her in chronic pain. A number of Utah people she says have died of a prescription drug overdose. She is already suffering from quite severe apnea and the doctor told her if she did not learn to keep her oxygen on at night, she could die quite easily in her sleep. That alarmed her 85 year old husband I can tell you. He does not want her to go before he does, and right now, even after 10 bypasses, he is doing very well. I can't imagine anyone tougher than he is.

Watch this journal for signs from the spirit world, as I expect a whole lot of leaving of my friends and acquaintences from now on. Ellen, if you will remember, died a few months ago after a year in the hospital with an infection after stomach reduction surgery. She dreamed of being fashionably thin for Victor who was in Paris at the time. Now Victor is in and out of the hospital, and I have felt Ellen close by. He had to have back surgery because his hand was going numb. And he is in a wheel chair with lymphoma in one leg (big leg) and severe diabetes. Since she died he lost his kidneys and had to go on dialysis, and he is the nicest guy! Somebody said in the elevator he had to go back to the hospital, I thought they said hospice and my heart dropped to my knees. Ellen only lasted a few days after signing up for hospice and telling them to stop feeding her by tube. I am hoping Victor will have a little more time with us, but he has had very bad health for so long. Always so cheerful with a smile and many interesting words to say. His apartment is wall to wall books. He has been going to college for years, learning and learning all the time. For these reasons I call the photo of him above Victor Victorious!

Election conclusons...

As I struggle through this election process in the midst of a lot of financial turmoil, I have been trying to draw my conclusions about what I see shaping up. My new blogger friends won't know that I am such a political animal as my aol journal friends are aware of, but I now do a blog on http://www.azcentral.com which is the blog site for the newspaper, the Arizona Republic, which I have been reading for years and years. I just started my blog there several weeks ago called G4Life. I also do some political videos on my Youtube channel gerryking40 where my creative partner Doc has helped me to film 50 videos!

I took three of my plays and turned them into a mini series, with Doc and I playing all the characters improv style. I am holding up doing another series for a while, at least until the election is over. One of my series is taken from my play and my memoirs called Daughters of the Shadow Men, so if you want to find out some of what my life was all about I refer you to that series: gerryking40 on Youtube. Shadow men is what I term fathers and husbands like my dad who was essentially gay I thought but married back in the old days in lieu of ever 'coming out' so great was the stigma attached to homosexuality! Still don't come out but rarely in those country ranching towns. Most of the time the women or children are not aware, or only dimly aware in some cases that something is not quite normal in their relationships.

So this became one of my issues, the hidden homosexuality in some marriages and how it affects the other mate and the family. (This is behavior not just confined to the males, but I think it is much more common among men) I also had a grandmother raised in polygamy so that became another of my issues in Mormon Utah which eventually caused me to leave the church among other reasons.

My mother was also one of the women who was reputed to have aborted a child with 'a coat hanger.' I think she said it was a catheter that her aunt sent her. I never thought that this self induced abortion improved things at all, but I could see that her frustration with her marriage was the primary reason she became so desperate. (I had awareness of the problem my dad had when very young.) So the abortion issue became a big one for me. I have always been on the side of Life as my mother went on to have three more children, sisters I have enjoyed immensely. My mother went through a repentence process for a number of years, just as though she had committed a violent crime. She never tried to justify it.

I felt we had gone down the wrong road with Roe vs Wade, which overturned the restraints to abortion that had been in place in most of the states for years. New York I think allowed abortion for more reasons but most states did not. Because of this decision about which I thought the Supreme Court Justices were not prudent, abortion numbers went sky high and have remained at troubling numbers ever since.

40 million children are aborted every year world wide. The last abortion statistics reported over 1.2 million in this country alone, estimating about 1 out of 4 children aborted! A recent article in a Mormon Magazine Ensign reported that this yearly toll is more children than soldiers were killed in World War I and World War II put together. We have just got used to abortions. Well, so did China and Russia, and they also got used to the holocausts of millions of adults, too, as happened in Nazi Germany's attack on the Jews and other groups. We can become very blase about holocausts which are going on right now with the unborn as long as it is not us who are cast as the victims. What makes the abortion issue so difficult is because every mother who attains one is assured that she did nothing wrong by the abortion factions, and pretty soon she sees nothing wrong with it.

I am troubled in these elections because Obama has supported Roe vs Wade all the way, I am afraid because he perceives that was the only way for him to insure the nomination. Unfortunately he was probably right. Bush and McCain on the other hand have supported a war in Iraq for the wrong reasons that has been ruinously expensive, and so they do not have the support to win this election I am afraid. Such men may love making war more than saving the lives of the unborn. It is going to take not making such mistakes to do anything about abortion. The practice has become deeply entrenched.

So I await the election knowing that the democrats are the party of abortion and thinking how I will fight should they win. It will be hard. Clinton was a pro choice candidate I hated to see win as was his wife Hillary. Black people are generally loyal to the democratic party which gave them the civil rights they and the Kennedys fought for. But that was before the democrats encountered the deep pockets of rich democrats who favored the philosophy of abortion. I would say these are the liberal, leftist thinkers who were influenced by communist thinking in Russia and China, of which abortion became an integral policy. Did we want that? I don't think we thought much about it. Those who do not think much about their beliefs are doomed to be dominated by those who do and are willing to use force to implement their ideas. Abortion is a violent means to control population and a number of other factors thought to be 'necessary' in an overcroweded world, according to that line of thought. Money is a means to bring in the new order.

The new order was abortion on demand, so it will take some doing to restore the integrity of the democratic party, to my mind, of which I have long been a member. I vote republican when I think they are more principled, especially on this issue. But when I hear war mongering from the republicans I am thrown into a quandry and don't know whether even to vote.

Great Day with Raymond at the Farmer's Market...

Here we are at the Farmer's Market across the street where we drank coffee and visited. After an hour there he asked me if I wanted to drive out to my daughter Ronda's house for lunch. I was happy to say yes, so we got to visit with Chad, Ronda, and my grandchildren, Jamal and Ethan, who are always happy to see their Uncle Raymond.

Jamal is enrolled in ASU already in the business college for next year. He starts tennis at the beginning of the year at his high school in Happy Valley. I hope we can all take in some of his matches.

Raymond was having a meeting last night with the cast of Caffeine to talk about filming a second season of this Internet mini-series. They are going to film very short commercials this time to sell to interested parties. Raymond is going to take a load of his belongings back to Utah in a few days, but depending on the weather, may return soon. This is when the snowbirds fly in from the cold places. Boulder is cooling off fast.

I have been so up in the air and upset over 'the worst week on Wall Street' for many a year I have not been able to visit journals a whole lot yet. I talked to my sister Linda who says she does not know what move to make, leave her house to foreclosure, leave town, move to SF, so she is in a quandry as I am sure a lot of others are who are having trouble paying their mortgage. She says there are no jobs to be had for a woman 68 years old at this time in Phoenix. She was one who took equity out of her house in a 'restructured' deal which actually upped her mortage beyond her means to pay. She said those who convinced her to do it made money, but now she is finding it hard to leave her house. She is getting to an age where she might have had to leave it anyway. And she probably won't be able to afford a car either, which is always an adjustment. I stopped being able to afford car insurance without a job. But I have very good bus service where I live so now I don't miss the car at all. I was always worried about it and I like company and someone else to do the driving. In fact, we are getting fast transit just outside my door in a couple of months.

The election has also had me in a tizzy. I am glad that McCain cooled some of his rhetoric. I think he got alarmed about setting off a firestorm of racist reactions as well he should worry. I am glad that he had enough character to assure his supporters they did not need to fear having Obama in the white house should he win. I think his negative campaign implying Obama ties to terrorists, etc, backfired on him. So I am keeping close track of what is going on there. I hate negative campaigning. It is so hard to listen to. So I will be glad when the election is over. How about you?

autumn and 14 versions of you

autumn is a town called boulder

where I was raised

dressed all in breathtaking yellow

when we brought my mother

home to sleep forever

under a delicate pink stone

honoring a former mayor

a citizen of past renown

autumn is poetry

coloring the last leaves

of summer green

like you are poetry

in 14 versions

of my escape

from the potentates

easy grasp

so powerful he can stay

inebriated all his waking hours

not realizing that

I was always poetry

in the motion of my body

when my blood quickened

someday I will live in a town

called poetry

in a place not quite of this earth

with somebody not bound

by a deadened mind

using the capacity

to feel ecstacy

in the bloods domain

killing death with life

with our last breath

--gerry

Hectic day ends well as problems get solved...

Carlene came to my rescue after I migrated 1 copy of my journal and 2 more partial copies. She told me very clearly just what to do, and it worked! I got the partial ones deleted just fine. You just have to know where things are. Every blog I go to, I read about some other problem I might run into, but a day at time!

To say nothing of the world practically coming to an end for some people economically today. Can't remember a worse day for the stock market. My sister Ann said one of our friends, just a hard working gal, reported she had just lost 14 thousand dollars just like that. I hope she does not lose anymore.

Missie says the paragraph feature does not work like it did for AOL. That is true. Let us see if I can live with this. I can see I am not going to get around to all the friends I wanted to visit tonight. I am already tired. I just wanted to say I am here with migration problems solved. Found the dash board, but can't find how to edit that stuff on my sidebar where I describe photos of my family that did not make it over here. Sounds odd, and for the life of me I cannot find the what do you call it that will let me do anything about it. I need to go to sleep!

Doc cannot do without me because I don't smoke! I said but I hate you because you drink! He said I know it. But first he has to find a likely woman who will let him drink but doesn't smoke. Tall order, I would say.

Hello, friends, just arrived!

I just got over here. I am looking around seeing where I am and wondering, but it feels okay. I have a new e-mail, but of course, I still have my old one, too.

Oops, the browser works. I had Doc take this photo today. I am going to send you all my new link. I am glad that we have a new home to go to with AOL Journals shutting down. It only took a few minutes to migrate, but I did have the darndest time getting my new e-mail to work in my account.

I have been quite depressed today, I think because the economy news. I also had to delete a very nasty commenter on my political blog: http://www.azcentral.com G4Life. She just wouldn't quit. She used to comment under another name on my journal, so now she has changed her screen name and is getting very vicious over on my political blog. Reminds me of a lady here who specializes in saying extremely nasty things to everybody. She told one of the office staff, "Oh, you are married to a Mexican, it's a wonder you are not on welfare!" She calls the black guys bad names and anyone and everybody fags She is a nice looking woman, too. Complaints have been made, even restraining orders, but I think management has lost patience with her and is starting an eviction attempt. Of couse, she will appeal.

So I am licking my wounds. I think this will be a nicer place than my political blog, but you have to expect some ferocious comments if you discuss some of the issues I do. Then Doc got all fired up over the debate and called all night. I just had to be patient. He can't get excited at night. I just have to say it is the bad economy!

Just saying hello today.