Arizona Governor Brewer speaks about the 'porous' border

Governor Janet Brewer said on Channel 3 this morning that the border is patrolled but not well enough and that the crackdown is for illegals who come here and get involved in criminal activities. The legislature was busy last night altering some of the wording of the bill that has caused reactions, hoping to keep racial profiling from seeming like such a threat. Inevitably, however, Hispanics are going to be nervous. If you look like the illegals, you are bound to be more uncomfortable than those who don't, but how else are you going to deal with illegals if they are not stopped at the border? This is a way to make up for an insecure border.
I do not believe that if illegals were not causing many problems, this measure would have been passed. This Governor has had to look very closely at many problems as she has been trying to balance the budget with cuts everywhere. A lot of people are being affected by the lack of state income. Believe me. So now the illegals are coming under the spotlight. Nobody is escaping who is costing the state money. If illegals did not commit crimes this would not be happening. The drug trafficking is HUGE with every way imaginable being used to get drugs across the border, even to carriers who are walking!
What would people who protest this bill suggest should be done about these illegal lawbreakers and how? The huge amount of drugs that have been confiscated suggests just how many drugs are coming across the border that have not been detected. I would say that law enforcement has been overwhelmed with crime. That's why Arizona has been desperate enough to pass a law that they knew was going to be unpopular among many, many who do not have the onus on them to stop illegal drug trafficking and other crimes illegals commit. Criminals must be happy to have people trying to protect them despite their illegal status and law breaking activities. Entering the country illegally is only the first law that some break. Getting away with that makes other laws that much easier to ignore in my opinion.
Reactions were to be expected especially from those who have been affected adversely financially. Mayor Gordon is worried about Phoenix's investment in the civic center which will be affected by those groups who might cancel on having conventions in Arizona. That has always kept Arizona cautious about riling any groups who might boycott Arizona, but desperation leads to extreme measures. I was glad to see that President Obama may be looking at the situation with new consideration about the time for the Federal government to act so the border states won't feel driven to acting on their own. Janet Napolitano should certainly be able to inform him about some of the realities of problems caused by the constant flow of illegals in Arizona. That was partially why she was named as the head of inland security, but can there be real security with such a porous border that hundreds can slip through in a day? Governor Brewer stated today that anybody could come through this border. It's a long border and therefore mighty tough to secure. And so far the US government has chosen not to make it any more secure than it is, which to many people's minds is not secure at all. Janet Napolitano was quoted as saying that the border is as secure as it has ever been! Which many have pointed out is a problem. It has never been secure enough! Governor Brewer suggests that not enough money is being spent on border patrols and agents. A secure border is still not top priority in the US. Without secure borders hundreds of people are crossing all the time so how can we have real inland security? People are used to porous borders, that's why. Securing the border might seem fascist to many. Unnecessary, but when governors and legislators decide it has become necessary, those who deal with the problems, it would seem like a good time for the President to think about getting more involved in immigration.
As long as so many people are upset, both for and against the law, we are not able to think about too much else in Arizona. This bill is still the topic on everyone's mind.

Playwright writes scene about Black Theater Production, "One Mo' Time"

PLAYWRIGHT: Since I am not a reviewer for a newspaper, I only blog, and I am a playwright by virtue of having written plays, I decided to write a scene about seeing this production instead of the traditional review.
FRIEND: We have been friends for many years. I have bestowed upon you a gift of tickets for this show. I hope you won't let me down now.
PLAYWRIGHT: Oh no. That is why I am writing a scene instead of review. Reviewers feel compelled to criticize. It is the nature of the beast, but why should I go out of my way to do that when I don't even have a newspaper to put it in?
FRIEND: You and I are both playwrights, for I have written a play, too.
PLAYWRIGHT: That's all it takes. I have seen a staged reading of your play. I thought it was good. I hope you are working on it.
FRIEND: Yes, I am working on it. But what has this got to do with "One Mo Time?"
PLAYWRIGHT: Nothing. I was just thinking of how much fun it would be if the Black Theater Company did your play.
FRIEND: I am stupified. Is this scene going to be about you and me and our plays and not One Mo Time?
PLAYWRIGHT: It says One Mo Time is about the lyric theater in 1926. I did think those girls playing Thelma and Ma Reed were lively and pretty, you know Chandra Crudup and the understudy Charmonique Tims. But I love that heavy set girl who played Bertha, DeAngelus Grisby. Wasn't she in your hit show, "Stealing Away?" I thought she was hilarious in that show.
FRIEND: Yes, and you didn't write much about "Stealing Away" in your review of it. Didn't you like it?
PLAYWRIGHT: Oh, it was a bunch of nonsense. But I thoroughly enjoyed it, a play about a bunch of black women planning a bank robbery. My gosh, when you had to do all that stuff in the dark up on stage when you were committing the robbery I was worried you would fall down and kill yourself!
FRIEND: I feared for my life every time I went on stage in that part.
PLAYWRIGHT: I feared you would never act again, but you came right back and did a wonderful acting job in "A Lesson Before Dying." That was my favorite play in the whole season. It had substance. I loved the play and the cast. I took my daughter and she and I both cried.
FRIEND: I wasn't even in One Mo Time and you are talking about me.
PLAYWRIGHT: No, I am recapping the whole season. I got to go to all these plays thanks to you. I loved taking a photo of you and I worked several hours on my review of that play I was so impressed. "Joyce Gittoes was fabulous." Remember, I said that?
FRIEND: Yes, and I was grateful, but tell me again, didn't you like One Mo Time?
PLAYWRIGHT: Like, what was there not to like? Now the ladies in this show were not the talented singers that were in "Three Sistuhs". Oh that one heavy set girl, didn't she have a voice? She made Three Sistuhs.
FRIEND: But what about "One Mo Time?"
PLAYWRIGHT: The acting was just fine. There was a whole lot to like in this show. But you don't get great singing voices in every show, but still the show must go on. Some singers must be found who can dance a little, who are easy on the eye, who can wear those sexy costumes, who can- It's a tall order to find a perfect cast. Good singers, too. No, this cast was not perfect, but the show was entertaining. And that is all I am going to say.
FRIEND: Are you sure? You have written a play just to say that?
PLAYWRIGHT: This is not a play. It's just a scene. I think best in dialogue. That is my natural way of thinking. Oh yes, I forgot to say that David Hemphill did a good job of casting a professional sheen on this show. Everything went smoothly. The band was good. The main male singer, Walter Belcher, who played Papa Du, the manager of the troup was most believable. A good choice. And I always like Rod Ambrose. Wasn't he the one who played the Preacher in "A Lesson Before Dying?"
FRIEND: Well, yes, but writing your review in the form of a play makes me nervous. Are you done?
PLAYWRIGHT: My goodness, just because Arizona has passed a stiffer Immigration Law everybody is down right nervous and ready to jump into a fight. Nobody in Arizona is going to try to send anybody back to Africa yet, are they?
FRIEND: Are you trying to get me to express my opinion about the new law?
PLAYWRIGHT: No, no! How did that issue get into this scene? I am trying my best to keep all controversial issues out of it.
FRIEND: You mentioned it first. I didn't.
PLAYWRIGHT: That's right. You are very well contained. I hope I have not said anything to offend anybody. I mentioned it I guess because we do live in Arizona.
FRIEND: That's probably why nobody is doing our plays. We can't keep on safe subjects.
PLAYWRIGHT: I hope to see you act again. You have done yourself up proud this season. I know what, you and I can write our plays in the hereafter. They surely do more controversial subjects there. I might even write a play for you and I to be in together. Not here of course.
FRIEND: Did you say you were going to see the Edward Albee play about the baby in the Herberger, done by iCollaberative Theatre?
PLAYWRIGHT: I don't know. I am very jealous of Edward Albee. Jealousy keeps me home from the theater. I don't like male playwrights like Albee having the chance to do their plays and me not. But like I say, we have a lot to look forward to in the hereafter. We will surely get our reward for writing plays in heaven.
FRIEND: Blacks had to get their reward in heaven for centuries since there were few rewards for them here.
PLAYWRIGHT: I know that. They have a lot of catching up to do. Women playwrights don't get many opportunities either. We will have a lot of catching up to do. In heaven. Can you imagine that? I can't imagine dying. Not yet. I am only 78. Do you think we need a lesson before dying?
FRIEND: I think I need a few more lessons before dying.
PLAYWRIGHT: So work on your play. You might get the chance to do it, in the hereafter of course.
FRIEND: Okay.

Immigration issue continues to impact emotions in Arizona

I have been trying to watch videos and keep track of what John McCain is saying, Mayor Gordon, and many others. I know my own family is impacted. My daughter Ronda has many Spanish friends, speaks Spanish, and is very concerned about racial profiling if people are expected to show papers verifying they are legally entitled to be here.
Living on the west side for 20 years, I worked with many Mexican people at Revlon for my four years there, I interacted with them socially and they were my neighbors in the apartments where I lived. I played pool about seven years in a bar where two masters played as well as many other great pool players, including a number of Mexican players. I even went to illegal cockfights a time or two which I thought were bizarre and strange, but I wanted to see what the fuss was all about. It seems the betting was the thing. I understand why the Mexican people who are already here are going to be doubly impacted by this issue because many have formed ties to illegals. In fact that is something an illegal is going to try to do for protection if possible. I have seen Mexicans who were native Americans being impacted adversely by the constant flow of immigrants, but they were apt to be more tolerant, thinking back to when their own ancestors may have come across the border seeking refuge for the first time.
I read a book recently by a writer I like Villasenor called Crazy Loco Love who talks about his father being brought to the border by his mother, a Yaqui Indian, nearly starving, her people killed, walking. He also talks about how badly he was treated in the school where he went in the US as a 'wetback' even though his father worked hard, acquired property, and eventually became a wealthy man. I do not believe in calling anybody names like 'wetback'. Such cruelty to refugees is not acceptable. But would we call closing our country to immigrants from such countries as Ireland, Germany and England, cruel? There came a time when immigrants from countries that had to come here by boat were successfully limited in numbers.
I do not believe in treating anyone badly who is coming from another country to seek refuge. I believe in civility to everyone. I know that it is going to be very painful for a lot of reasons if the US decides to try harder to secure their borders, which is what lawmakers in Arizona feel must be done. They say they are trying to do what the Federal government has failed to do by not securing the borders. They are going to try to enforce immigration laws that have not been enforced in years.
Everyone has gotten used to the laws not being enforced, so such a new law is bound to cause pain as well as doubt as to the necessity. It is already causing a gamut of upset reactions!
But if 3,000 to 8,000 illegals, an estimate I just read, cross into a country DAILY for years, it is going to tax any country's ability to cope with the flow. The border is going to be extremely difficult to secure, but without a strong determined INTENT to stop the flow, nothing will work too well.
I have been interested to see how the democrats are responding, because the democrats have traditionally addressed the issues of minorities as they did with civil rights. They may think first of the suffering of the refugees and are being quick to accuse the republicans of prejudice and racism. Our Mexican legal citizens will tend to sympathize with people they identify with for many reasons.
The US has been a big brother to immigrants for years now, and I believe that it can be the big brother still by pressuring Mexico to take more responsibility for the population that emanates from within their borders. If the US secures the borders that alone will put the onus on Mexico to do a better job of taking care of their own citizens. Yes, securing the border would be an awful crunch to the poor of Mexico, those most apt to try to cross the border. People are going to be afraid. Any adjustment is horrendous especially after so many years of tolerating the flow because it was perceived as to much trouble to stop, so allowing the poor of Mexico almost to think of the US as their country where they could come and be received and treated better than in their own country. They just had to take the risks of crossing the border, which have not been too great or so many would not have successfully crossed.
Nothing is going to happen with great speed. That would be impossible. We are going to have to proceed slowly to implement any significant changes.
There was a time when refugees poured into our country from many places, Ireland, England, Germany, etc. And a time came when this flow was limited, because it was perceived that the US could no longer absorb that many immigrants. But the flow was a lot easier to control than our borders to Mexico have been. The challenge of securing the border to Mexico has never been met. No president up to date has been determined enough to do it and probably won't until the people in the border states have had enough and start demanding it! For a long time people close to the border have felt their rights, their property, their very lives were being altered for the worse with illegals coming through in such numbers.
The people who are impacted by this flow in our state have started to make their protests felt by passing a tougher immigration law. People in other states need to be willing to understand how illegal immigration impacts this state and all the other border states. What impacts those states eventually affects the rest of the country. So this is an issue that should concern everyone. We all need to inform ourselves of more facts which I think will cut down on the violence of the rhetoric!
For twenty years I walked among the Mexican people in our country and they made me welcome in their neighborhood. I loved many of these people but what affected me affected them, the violence, the overcrowding, the drug wars. There is always a feeling of things being out of control with illegals. No one is responsible. Mexico is not responsible.
We are absorbing all these people as refugees, but if this goes on for years, and people expect it to stop, no, it will not stop unless the US stops it.
Mexico is bleeding people into our country and we cannot get at the causes because it is their country. We cannot do anything about the flow of people from that end because it is not our country.
Pressure can be put on Mexico, more now than when our country was too undeveloped to do this. We are selling short our ability to make sense out of this situation. We have not faced the fact that we simply cannot keep absorbing the overflow. That's what the border states are saying. I know that's what Arizona is saying. The state of California is BANKRUPT and people are just ignoring that fact like it will just go away because there are a lot of rich people down there. Arizona is deep in the hole. The budget cuts are hurting. Let's keep looking at the facts and go from there.

New Tougher Immigration Law causes agitation in Phoenix, Arizona

I think everyone in the city is going to be affected one way or another. I have been watching videos on the subject on Youtube all evening. I have a man who sends me videos on subjects in the news and I go from them to other related video views. I am going to make a video in the morning. I am still not quite sure what I am going to say, but I have to support the law, and I will try to tell you some of the reasons why. Illegals have not stopped flowing into the city. Police are still arresting smugglers and large loads of illegals. The difference in the new law is that those smuggled can now be charged as well as the coyotes who brought them here. I watched a recent Sheriff Arpaio video who says that he believes arrest will do the most to discourage illegals. He says a free trip back to Mexico has not done anything to deter the same ones from returning again and again.
I talked to an illegal on the west side more than twelve years ago who said when he got arrested and taken back, it was his third time, and each time he had immediately turned around and walked back. He was an onion picker who always returned for the harvest. Sheriff Arpaio said no money can be made in jail. He thinks if the National Guard arrested people at the border and kept them for a certain amount of time for crossing the border that would be the biggest deterrent to border crossings he thinks the US could come up with. But he says the US does not enforce immigration laws. He believes he is the only sheriff who is enforcing the law, but he says the rash of kidnappings by the drug cartels have been cut way back since he started arresting people. He said the drug cartels were targeting illegals in the drug rackets for kidnappings and murders.
He seems a lot more interested in violent criminals than any others which he says the steady flow across the border has fostered. I know that coyotes are still smuggling people in as every few days there is an arrest in the news, a drop house is raided, or a transport van is stopped for a traffic violation and some have been involved in wrecks. People who keep track of crime know that the flow of illegals is still going on. Those in law enforcement can furnish all the statistics you want on the criminal activities of illegals. The drug smuggling from Mexico has been huge for a long time.
I do think that people will calm down once they realize that law enforcement is spread far too thin to be arresting Hispanic people who have done nothing but forgotten their ID. Balancing the budget has caused Governor Brewer to have to make severe cuts in the budget anyway she can. Good heavens, this budget crunch alone is going to make it impossible for law enforcement to arrest innocent people. They can't even cover the criminal population adequately.
I think everyone should ask themselves how long could we reasonably continue to let our borders remain as open as they have been. If there is no real punishment for the crime of crossing the border that will keep people home, they will continue to come. By the thousands. I don't think people in states that are not on the border have any idea just how porous our borders have been for years and years. Now the governments of states like California and Arizona have been devastated by the recession and are seeking to cut costs anyway they can.
If you went to a Maricopa County Clinic for health care as I did for years, servicing people on State Aid, you would probably be shocked at the numbers of Mexican women with many small children in these clinics who do not even speak English! I think America has been incredibly generous to the poor of Mexico, but now our own resources are starting to run thin.
I have read so many articles for so many years discussing the problem. The birth rate in Mexico remains high, probably partly because so many could cross the border and receive free service on welfare. I would defy liberals to go to these clinics for years as I have and not see that a big problem was going to be forthcoming down the road. That day has arrived.
I never allowed myself to become upset or begrudge any of these women what they could get in the US. They came because they would be better off here. I spent 20 years on the west side in a 90 percent Mexican population, but in the last years I spent there the section where I lived close to 35th avenue and Van Buren became increasingly a little Mexico. So many lived around that area that did not speak English, the signs on the businesses etc. started to change to Spanish, until eventually Spanish signs predominated. But as law enforcement started to crack down on illegal immigration many of these businesses have closed.
This is what I think is wrong with illegal immigration. When people originate in another country and cross the border into the US in great numbers, the US government can have no influence on the burgeoning population in Mexico, their point of origin. I think Mexico has relied on the US to take the overflow for years, so there was no reason for them to seriously address the population numbers they could not put to work. They would overflow to the US.
Any serious changes would of course upset Mexico and the ones most apt to immigrate. But I don't think we can allow our emotions to rule when we address this issue. If we think about the hardship change will impose we will never make the changes. That's why we haven't up to now.
Years ago migrant workers came here under a policy, and were expected to work a certain amount of time to do the harvest or whatever and then were expected to return to Mexico, but this policy was soon not being enforced and that is the way it has been ever since. Our laws did not change about illegals violating the law by crossing the border to stay, but enforcement of the law did change.
Now desperation is starting to happen by the ones affected adversely by illegal immigration. Ask what your state has been providing illegals for years. I know they have been provided here with welfare, food stamps and free health care for years. Now the state is cracking down. Food stamps are not going to be provided. Health care is not going to be provided. Does the US government plan to provide free health care to indigent illegals?
I feel that some employers have taken advantage of the low wages they can pay illegals. I believe their profits have been higher as a result. Why do companies move their plants to Mexico and other foreign countries, but to take advantage of cheap labor? Illegals are used to being exploited but most Americans are not which is why I think resentment has grown when employers naturally want to take advantage of cheap labor in our own United States provided by illegals. So there is now a crackdown of employers who have used illegals primarily, so they are upset.
I think when Americans are out of a job they will do about any labor to keep from starving to death just like anybody else. When we have had such a deep recession and so much unemployment the flow of illegals still coming causes more resentment.
I think Arpaio who I happen to think can be quite a repelling man still has good ideas on how to stop the flow. He is our elected Sheriff and he was popular enough to be re-elected, so like him or not, he is the one we have to look to to change, and he has had to deal with drug smuggling on a massive scale, and the kidnappings and murders that go with it to say nothing of other crimes illegals commit.
I thought it was a mistake to put Janet Napolitano into the job of homeland security because she was never tough enough on crime and illegal immigration. This is one area where I think the liberal democrat has not performed well.
The west side area where I lived in subsidized housing was unimaginably violent, rife with gang wars over drugs, constant gun fire. Drugs, drugs, drugs, murders and more murders. Murder over profit.
I could not keep moving to more subsidized housing, because there are very few I could get into that had the three bedrooms I was required to rent. I had become too disabled to work, so I was in a bad fix. I had to seek help so my kids would have shelter and food on the table. It is very tough to become too weak to hold down a job. You are worried sick, and you have to learn to follow the path that others have gone who became disabled and could not work. You have to learn how to survive so your kids can survive, too!
In subsidized housing or indeed in a lot of poor neighborhoods where crime is rife, the only thing I thought that stood between me and my family getting shot were the police! We had to call them nearly every weekend. And they always showed up. Your relatives wouldn't even visit you in that neighborhood. I have not been able to get any liberal democrats to listen to my accounts of violence on the west side, do my plays, and most artistic theater directors are liberal democrats.
When somebody has to get arrested, and somebody has to go to jail, liberals tend not to support police action as necessary. I learned to be grateful for the police on the west side, and I learned to cry when one of them got shot, and believe me a lot of policemen have gotten shot in Phoenix.
Yes, there is police brutality, but what about thug brutality?? You think illegals who are bringing huge amounts of drugs into this country are nice people? Liberals act like all you have to do is be nice to people and they will be good people. You can't argue with a gun. Only the police can do that. I found myself living in a very violent world among many illegals. Where I was scared all the time. I slept with one ear open all night. They could break in. They did break into many apartments. They shot up apartments, and most of the violent crime I would say had to do with Mexico, drugs, and illegal activity.

I hate to dream about little green mambas

We always have a few poisonous things in our lives, and the little green mambas dream meant a few in mine, my Memoir chapters coming up, so had to take a break so I could stand to write about the bad stuff. There were good things happening along with so I hope I can think of enough of those to counteract the effects of the deepening of crises in our lives due to my dad's drinking as well as the actions of another man.
In the meantime I was heartened by reading about the life of a great doctor, Paul Farmer, who went to Haiti to administer to the poorest worst off people in the world long before the recent earthquake. The name of this book is "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Pulitzer Prize winner, Tracy Kidder, so if you ever sorta lose your faith in mankind here is the book to get it restored. It is a very good antidote to a book about serial killers, "A Single Shot" by Camille Kimball which I just wrote about, the ones who terrorized Phoenix a few years ago.
Right now I am to a place in this new book where Dr. Paul Farmer has gone to Peru because of a very serious problem developing with the treatment of TB. Many have become immune to the drugs for several reasons, mostly due to stopping the treatment and then starting it again which tends to build immunity to the drugs. So a very virulent form of TB is developing because those who acquire it from these contacts are also drug resistant. Dr. Farmer is down there consulting with those concerned with possible epidemics to see what can be done. They have decided they must treat these people even though the cure is going to be very expensive, but they have decided they cannot afford to let this virulent form of TB spread.
I don't know how they are doing now with this, but I am sure that all those who were working in Haiti are really busy now with the effects of the earthquake. A great humanitarian who owned a construction company gave millions of dollars to Dr. Farmer for medicine and a treatment center in Haiti. It takes people who care about the poor and impoverished to get together to do anything significant about improving their lives. Dr. Farmer gets so irate when he thinks about how the greed of a few was mostly to blame for impoverishing the people of Haiti even more by building a dam that caused many of them to become homeless and did not benefit them at all! Plus the two dictators, Duvelier and his son, 'Baby Doc' would keep a good portion of any help they received from other countries to improve the lives of the poor until finally 'Baby Doc' gave up his reign and left the country. I remember that happening. Then Dr. Farmer helped a priest called Artistide to win the election who was displaced a year later by a military coup probably backed by the US. Anyway, as happens so often in these struggling countries, whoever rules turns out to be a disappointment or if he is doing any good is soon replaced but not improved upon.
I got this book to read more about Haiti as I thought it would be a good book to catch me up on its history, and it was. I did not know about this Doctor Farmer, and now I am glad that I do. The green mambas are the greedy dictators who rob the people for their own pleasure and live in luxury while most of the people starve and suffer a little more.
I talked to my son Raymond yesterday who said that when he finally arrived back home in Boulder where he acquired Baby she was so surprised and pleased to find herself 'home' again she went wild for hours. She expressed her joy her master had done the right thing and taken her home again! After a winter away she probably doubted she would ever see that place again. They stayed a lot of places and Baby played with a lot of dogs and I am sure she learned a great deal, but now she is home, so that made Raymond happy to see his dog so happy!
Now little green mambas, please stay out of my dreams! Although I know that life is composed of the bitter along with the sweet and we all must adjust.

P.S. I forgot to add that I was able to talk to my sister Linda last night in San Francisco who was pleased to learn her website had been featured in Ann's blog, Beauty in Art on my blog list. She said she fell into a gopher hole and injured her ligaments trying to keep from falling, so now a big lump comes into her leg when she tries to sit down to the computer and she can't stay on it more than five minutes, so has not been able to get back to put captions on her photographs. She wishes she had just fallen down, but I don't. It could have been worse. Remember if you go to Facebook do a search on my name Gerry (King) Hitt or just Gerry Hitt and look among my friends to find the right Linda King. If you appreciate art these photos are worth seeing. I have always known she had a goldmine in those photos which show her great work. She has been laboring away for years doing these heads of people. If you will remember she is the one suffering with numb hands and feet, but I don't think she realizes how hard she pushed that clay all those years and I think that might have something to do with the inflammation in her hands. She has also suffered a number of injuries and sprains of her fingers and other limbs fighting with one of her husbands. Linda is a fighter, but it is hard for a woman to get the best of a man.

She said that she and her son Scott Hall have just about finished the screen play adapted from her memoir about her life with Charles Bukowski, the writer. Then he is hoping to find the backing to make the movie. I told her my dreams say she will finish in the money with this horse (her screen play)! Bukowski taught her race track lingo. So I know she figured in my dream, too, as well as my son with his screenplay, play, and synopses for movies. Raymond will soon be revved up to full speed ahead for the summer Heritage Festival featuring music and history! A great place to go in the summer if you have never been there.

Race horse painted by Linda.

Header done by Connie shows the sunrise we watched took place somewhere else, at the same time we watched our own. We have also watched sunrise in Greenland, Turkey, and on an island (the one pictured). You never know where "Sunrise" on TV will be.

My dream last night about an exciting horse race in California

I came awake with a start after having this dream: three horses were pounding down the fast track somewhere in California neck to neck, all going to finish in the money. IN THE MONEY! I tried to think what this dream could mean and I got that it could mean three people in the family were going to finish in the money in a race of great excitement on the fast track in California. I could not sleep any longer, so got up at 5 am to find that Ann whose blog is listed on my blog list 'Beauty in Art' was featuring my sister Linda King's web site. That was very exciting to find there. I had simply left a comment saying she might be interested in seeing the 59 sculptures and their subject photos Linda has put up on Facebook. Ann says there were 500 Linda King's listed on Facebook. Linda, are you listening, you and Scott both might need to put something else in your names to distinguish them so you can be found! But Ann found her website and featured it instead, but it does not have nearly as many of the startling sculpture photos contrasted with their subjects that Linda has posted on Facebook. You can truly see from them what a great eye she has for likeness.
Charles Bukowski, of course, was defined by the race track where he went most every day so my dream certainly features Linda and her association with him. I think this dream is also about my son Raymond's work who has a horse in the running on the fast track in Los Angeles, California, who right now is headed for Boulder, Utah, my hometown, where he lives during the summer. And maybe the other horse is yours truly Gerry King whose early life has certainly been defined by horses. Could it be that we will all come into the money on the fast track in California? I like to think that is the meaning of this dream. I was certainly catapulted int a wonderful mood seeing that exciting race in my dreams. Here's to the strong, the fast, and the persistent who can surely win in the money if they keep trying!

Here is the link to Ann's blog: http://beauty-inart.blogspot.com/ Ann, I have an idea. My Facebook name is Gerry (King) Hitt. If you go to it you may access my friends and the right Linda King will be among them! Any of the rest of you may find the right Linda King on Facebook by going to my profile first.

header by Connie closest thing I could find in my file to portray how the horses were running in my dream.

Play for our Times

Here is the first scene of my new play called Play for our Times
Characters:
ACTOR
PLAYWRIGHT

ACTOR: I am not sure you could write a play for our times. How long has it been since you actually wrote a play?
PLAYWRIGHT: Quite a while. I had no motivation to write a play. I had no actors to play the parts. But I always thought I would become famous toward the end of my life. I am 78. I can't really wait any longer to write the play for our times.
ACTOR: You want me to play the leading role of course?
PLAYWRIGHT: You are a professional actor, aren't you? I assure you, I am every woman. I will be able to write a part that will challenge you.
ACTOR: How so?
PLAYWRIGHT: You know Henry the Eighth don't you? I have been watching that series about him, and reading histories and watching documentaries.
ACTOR: Surely you aren't going to write a play about Henry the Eighth?
PLAYWRIGHT: No, no. I am just citing my research when I create a character. I am very thorough. I may have to study your character for months in order to write a part you will want to play.
ACTOR: How do you mean? How can you study my character? We don't even live in the same part of the country.
PLAYWRIGHT: We will set up a telepathic relationship. You just think about things you want to tell me. I pick them up.
ACTOR: How so? You mean you will try to read my mind?
PLAYWRIGHT: Yes, it is better to do it telepathically because if you try to write it to me you will freeze up. You will end up not saying anything.
ACTOR: How about the phone?
PLAYWRIGHT: Terrible. You would not say anything I could use on the phone either. But you do have to give me your tacit permission to tap your mind. I am a professional mind reader but I always ask permission to enter someone's domain.
ACTOR: What do you expect to extract from my mind?
PLAYWRIGHT: Who knows, but it is amazing what people will think about if they think someone is tapping their minds. They are much less inhibited, so communications you pick up this way can go on for hours.
ACTOR: But how do you know what you get is real?
PLAYWRIGHT: You don't talk about it. That would spoil the illusion. You are experimenting with telepathy so what the other person sends may just create images, pieces of thinking, flow of consciousness.
ACTOR: But how could you enjoy that kind of thing?
PLAYWRIGHT: Oh, you take control. You do dialogue. You ask questions. And you believe that what you receive back is the message and then you don't ask later anything about the conversation, because this is not a conventional conversation. It is like a dream. Your dream mechanism will likely imagine something that is not quite accurate, but the more you practice the more accurate you are apt to be.
ACTOR: But what is the purpose of such an activity? We have the Internet.
PLAYWRIGHT: Yes, but our messages are still very primitive. They don't even cover much of what we really think. You see a great deal of what we say to other people is determined by who is listening or reading what we say. We always alter what we say for those who are listening. But if you set up a means of communication that no one else can tap then you are a lot more apt to get what that person really thinks. A person who develops telepathic powers can become a more powerful communicater in every way.
ACTOR: Well, I am quite intrigued but I am not sure I want this part that depends on my developing my telepathic powers.
PLAYWRIGHT: Believe me, this will help me to become the perfect playwright for you. You will be guiding me to creating the part of your dreams.
ACTOR: But is this exercise of the mind necessary? Don't you have any other way to write a part for someone?
PLAYWRIGHT: No, I have gone past creating parts that are superficial representations of people. This way I will get something new. A melding of aspects of you not deeply explored yet.
ACTOR: Good hell. This sounds like an invasion of personality I am not sure I trust.
PLAYWRIGHT: I am interested in understanding what a person is in a new way. I am always studying the spirit to see if it has a life beyond what we know here. I tap people's minds all the time of people who have passed from this realm. This is pure communication between them and me a lot like telepathy. I try to prove these spirits exist just like you do in a form I can tap just like I can tap your mind. I think the key to their existence is contained in my mind. When I tap the mind of the spirit, I let what comes flow into my consciousness. Sometimes I write down what comes, sometimes I don't. Now if I can tap a living person's mind there is a parallel. The communications are much the same. Do you see what I am getting at. When I write the part it will be an interpretation of your spirit, a portrait you might say. As soon as you passed I should be able to tap your spirit the same way that I do here.
ACTOR: Do I have to die in this role?
PLAYWRIGHT: Oh no, I will write many interpretations of your spirit life. Of course I will also communicate with you in the conventional way. So that we can be sure that we are connecting in the familiar way. I read what you write. Perhaps you will read what I write. We have to have some way to keep in touch the familiar ways that people do it, if they don't live in the same part of the country. I have done this many ways. With people I saw everyday, I picked up on their expressions, made eye contact, said a few words and so on. I only use telepathy when I find it becomes necessary. People stop each other from communicating all the time, according to their own limitations. People don't like to see other people communicating in ways they can't, for example through books they have read. If people listening aren't readers they become very annoyed with such conversations because they feel left out of the loop. Actors communicate about parts they have played. Professional actors might be an exclusive club that others can't really belong to because they have not had those experiences.
I am not a playwright operating out of a life in the theater since I did not get the opportunities. Many playwrights don't get the opportunity to do their plays in theaters, but that is not a bad thing because it forces them to go to other arenas. Everybody dies. Everybody deals with the question of whether there is a spirit, so that drama is universal. We all get to play some part in life and in death. We may not do this Play for Our Times in a theater. The theater might not be relevant enough to our times to do it. They might be back doing Henry the Eighth.
ACTOR: I am not sure I want this part.
PLAYWRIGHT: Think about it.

Sunrise in HD TV in different parts of the world

Every morning when I go down to Doc's we watch "Sunrise" in different parts of the world on his 46 inch TV. This is a pleasant activity, no words, just the sounds of of nature. I wanted him to take a photo of me where we went this morning.
Someone downstairs gave me a New York Times he got free from going to breakfast to the college dorm cafeteria. I also bought the Arizona Republic which featured a great many arguments pro and con about the Immigration bill that is coming before Governor Janet Brewer to sign. A number are urging her to veto the bill which they think will mean that people will be checked for legality at any given time. Some responsible for the bill say no it still means you must have probable cause that is a reason for asking someone to prove they are in this country legally. Some think it will discourage the tourist trade because they will think we are prejudiced.
Montini, longtime Arizona Republic columnist prints a letter from someone of Mexican origins who thinks this will signal a change in how people like her whose family has been here for generations will be treated.
But I did think something had to be done to stop the floods of illegal immigrants coming here. This change has been a long time coming and everyone knew it was going to be hard to implement a change.
I doubt very much that Governor Brewer will veto the bill just because I think that with Arizona in such a hole with their finances she will have no choice but to sign a bill that is designed to discourage many in Mexico from continuing to believe the U.S. is the promised land and coming here to try to exist illegally. Illegals have received what ended up being free health care here and they have been granted food stamps. Well, such benefits would really end with this bill. But there is the argument that Arizona can no longer afford to be so generous to illegals as they have been in the past. Measures to prevent these benefits from being granted have been more half hearted in the past. We have not wanted to deny destitute people food and health care. Emergency treatment to the hospitals cut off for people who have been able to take advantage of this is tough.
The constant flow of illegal immigrants has long been happening in Arizona, but now due to a deep recession and other reasons, many believe this generosity must be curtailed.
So Arizona struggles with the increased problems that come with being a border state to Mexico.
I tested Doc out this morning to see what he would do if I fell in love with someone I met on the Internet. After all, I have been going global in my efforts to find a more sober companion than he is. He is hardly a companion at all. I have never been one to be content with a relationship that is going nowhere. I spend many hours by myself as he is too impaired by alcohol intake by afternoon for me to tolerate.
I have all the qualities that would make a long distance relationship possible. I can even travel quite freely to the spirit realms and have many years of practice at telepathic relationships. These men did not even know how to use the internet, but were very good at sending their thoughts and picking up mine. My last telepathic relationship ended when he got into drinking and doing drugs. Then he became just like Doc in his impaired ability to think let alone send his thoughts anywhere.
With the Internet to help a telepathic relationship should be within anyone's reach. I also have an online phone and can call anyone in the world and talk to them at a very low cost. I can't even find anyone to call, since the husbands have all retired in my family and are constantly underfoot, so object to my sisters talking on the phone. Doc is the only one who calls me. I have told him and told him that his drinking so limits our relationship for him not to be surprised when I tell him I have fallen in love with someone else. I fell in love with his talents and intellect, but his body was always so impaired that it did not figure in our relationship at all. That has never been satisfactory to me, and I think five years is long enough to put up with it.
He has willed me his 46 in TV. I would undoubtedly lose that plus my camera privileges and use of his big new computer. I only own one fourth of the camera, but could probably still lose it if he decided to befriend another companion and make videos with her. He claims I could still come and make videos no matter what happens and put them on the Internet through his computer. But something is wrong with the camera which may be old batteries, but he won't buy any new ones. It takes longer and longer for it to focus and the repair people want $200 upfront before they will even look at it. One of these days it might not focus at all!
My son Raymond is angling to do theater in LA. I am very excited about his prospects there. I want to be able to take a trip to LA myself if I think I can get one of my plays done there, too. Of course this is in the future a ways, but I have got at least 6 plays I could submit without a problem. I am convinced Doc is not going to quit drinking so I want to free myself to be able to connect to people interested in theater and serious about it. Doc is not serious about anything. Five years is plenty long to give him the chance to change. He has shown no signs of doing it, so he is receiving his notice.
We will still continue to be friends if possible, but I am sure my pulling away from him in the love department will make a difference. I am a woman who has always needed to fall in love. I was as a matter of fact in love with this other guy the whole time practically I have been with Doc. He got evicted a year ago. I have only seen him once since then. So my love for him has died. It was not a satisfactory relationship either since he was a serial flirt, but he managed to keep my feelings involved for some time. As long as he was in here and sober he was able to distract my feelings if nothing else, since Doc was always inebriated and just could not quite do it. Weird things happen when alcohol is involved.
But one reason I moved on to Doc was because I felt this other guy could not be trusted to focus on one woman. I did not quite have it for him. He was a bad alcoholic, too, who might at any time, lose his grip on sobriety, which is what happened. He got another girlfriend and through some an upset in this relationship he lost his grip on sobriety.
I knew once he was gone from here that would probably be the last I would ever see him, and it pretty much has been, but he was a very charismatic man. Also very gifted. He was a serial flirt because women had only to talk to him a time or two to fall in love with him. He had a superstar personality, but could not handle his own ability to attract women. I think what he did not do is decide that honesty was necessary. Complete honesty. You just did not know what he was thinking. He was just too prone to see still another woman he wanted to flirt with. I don't see how any woman could handle that quality in a man well. I am not going to give loyalty when I can't get it. Doc was loyal but he would not give sobriety. He is not a mean drunk, but he can't really think well and do business as an alcoholic. So that is that.

Night of dreams

It is always tough to spend any time at all in the ken of serial killers. I love this beautiful header Connie sent me this morning, a wonderful antidote. Last night I seemed to be dreaming all night long. I was moving cattle with my sister Ann and I could see that my dad was not going to help us. He was tired of driving cattle. His life as a working cattle rancher was over. But I was thinking well the cattle will probably lie down and sleep when we do and they will be there in the morning. I was worried about losing any of them.
Don't know what that dream means but I do think that interaction with the dead keeps people from getting too upset especially as they get older and something goes wrong. I have been down visiting a long time resident in here who is under hospice care. Her nurse came while I was there and I met her. She is a very pleasant person.
One of the bloggers I follow was talking about the vastness of space and how extremely small and insignificant we are in our galaxy which we know now is just one among many many. I try not to let that bother me. In fact I find it quite reassuring. When I read about serial killers I think how terrible it would be if man was any more significant than he is with people like that among us. We have not evolved enough to be any more significant than we are, methinks.
However I can always think of something that will cheer me up. I noted that Paul Dirac, the physicist, would spend hours thinking in order to come up with new insights in his field, and that is what I have always done to come up with new insights into our life of the spirit.
For example scientists still dispute that we can receive dreams that foretell future events, but for those who do receive these dreams the language of dreams is understood, and a whole life time may be spent trying to advance knowledge of how this can happen. I began to notice I had feelings and dreams about future events, and I could almost pinpoint where this event was going to happen and how significant it might be in relation to my life.
How could I do this? I am not quite sure, but a dream of the future will usually have quite a few signs that help me to recognize the event when it comes to pass. I could go back to the dream and tell whether it had happened or not. When it did happen, I would know almost instantly that this was it. For example one time I set out on a trip. The night before I dreamed that my car started failing and on the Glen Canyon bridge over the Colorado river it stopped. I was quite worried, as it is against the law for a vehicle to stop on that bridge. I was driving from my hometown in Boulder to Phoenix. I had my two younger children with me. Ronda was around five or six and Dan was still a baby. I dreamed that after my car stopped on the bridge I saw a spirit make a big dive out away from the bridge. I knew this had something to do with what was wrong with the car. I thought and thought but I could not come up with any further explanation of what was going to break.
I have always compared the attempt of the mind to get the message of the future as kind of a charades. The action in the dream means something which you may have trouble 'getting' but that is because details of a future event are very hard to pick up. I was picking up I was going to have a car trouble about 12 hours in advance but not exactly what kind.
Sure enough, about a mile from the Glen Canyon bridge my car began to miss a little and slow down. I was very worried about the bridge but I was actually able to get across the bridge although going slowly and up the hill into Page, Arizona. I pulled into a gas station and asked the driver to look and see if he could detect a problem. He opened the hood and said, "Oh, it is your fan belt. I think I have got one." He replaced the fan belt and that was it! How lucky could I get?
But it sure felt serious when my car could hardly make it up the hill to Page. When I thought back to the figure diving off the bridge, I laughed. Of course. He was 'fanning the air!" And I had not been able to guess what on earth the figure in my dream who I thought was James Dean was trying to tell me. For quite a long time he was my guardian angel over automobile trips.
Well, because it was kind of a funny dream that was an indication the problem was not going to be too serious.
So this is how the study of dreams goes. But to me this is why some people receive remarkable dreams about the future and others don't, because they are interested in doing so, and willing to try to interpret dreams, that is pay attention to them to see if there is a message about the future contained within them.
Of course a future event involving a death is a lot more serious, and those dreams will be more somber as one would expect. But the very fact that some people can pick up future events in dreams tells me there is a lot we don't know about our minds. So there is no reason to be too pessimistic about what is in store for us, including an existence that we may go to after leaving this one because something in us does not die.
I have always thought that life requires an escape hatch when pain becomes too great. So the body that is getting old and broken down is discarded and perhaps a more durable aspect of ourselves just steps out of it to resume a possible previous existence. We may return many times to this existence after an experiment of 'life' is over. I 'sense' this, and I have no reason not to think it is so.
I have sensed spirits many times. This caused me to conclude that if you dream about someone who has passed this is their way of 'visiting' you. They want to tell you something because they find you are able to pick them up.
The study of dreams helps you to put a 'face' to who you sense in the dream. Certain vibrations you may recognize in dream form as this person or that person. My father, for example, was the prominent spirit in my dream last night, which signals that he wants to communicate to me. Should I let him speak? Why not, I ended my last memoir chapter talking about how worried I was about him dying when I was ten.
DADDY: I did not know how worried you were about me. I am sorry I worried you as I did with my drinking. I want to tell you I have quit drinking now for good. Ha!
GERRY: So what is your message?
DADDY: I am worried about my oldest grandson's drinking. He and Raymond are the only grandsons who lived with me, I really got to know. I put Gary to work driving the truck when we hayed when he was only five! He loved driving the truck. But I am afraid if he does not do something about his drinking he will die too young.
GERRY: I am sure that Raymond has tried to convey to him his concern in his latest visit. What do you suggest that he do?
DADDY: I have tried to visit him, but I don't know that he is open to my spirit. I am going to go to Boulder now to see what Raymond can come up with in the way of an AA meeting, which might have helped me. I never found enough help in church. I was worried about all the brothers drinking, a lot more than you think. You saw what I did to try to quit, but when I saw that I may have caused you to have a nervous breakdown, I was determined I would quit. It took me two or three more years to shut my drinking down to almost zero, but not quite. You must agree though I got a lot better.
GERRY: A great deal better, otherwise you would have died. I appreciated the fact that you tried to stay alive. I regretted that you and Mother fought so much though, and that you got drunk that one last time when I was living with you, which I thought contributed the most to your death in nine months.
DADDY: I was not able to get through my divorce well. It was a mistake to marry again. You tried to tell me not to marry, but I did not listen to you. I got upset when I went to see her after she left, and she refused to return to me and got drunk and caused a terrible wreck. I was very lucky not to kill any of those young men I hit. I did what any drunk fears he will do when he drives drunk. I always wanted to come and apologize for doing that.
GERRY: I always assumed you were sorry that you did marry after she left you, of course.
DADDY: It was just crazy. The whole thing was crazy. Your mother married a week after the divorce was granted, so I thought I would show her and find someone to marry me, too. I am surprised anybody was willing, but as you said she had no idea what she was getting into. There is no fool like an old fool. She felt she made a terrible mistake, too.
GERRY: She did, she did not even know you. I could see her realizing almost immediately she had done something stupid.
DADDY: It has taken me a lot of years for me to allow you to say what you thought about Bill Isabel and all that. My brother Reed told me to quit denying the truth, just to admit it. What could that hurt? I would never want to live the kind of life I did again. It was miserable. I don't know what kind of lesson there was in it for me, but I have had a hard time learning it.
GERRY: I have often thought about what kind of lesson I was supposed to learn coming to the earthly existence as your daughter.
DADDY: Do you think it was worth it?
GERRY: I thought it was the kind of lesson that few would agree to learn, so I must have agreed to the kind of life I was going to have to live. I think I did. I thought there was good reason for it. Few know how they would handle such a life as you and I lived, as father and daughter. It was tough, but I think that we had something to teach the world. That is always the way I looked at it. I did not think you were going to be able to help turning out as you did, born into those circumstances, nor could I help what was going to happen, but what I could do was learn from it. I would think when I was growing up, would I have wanted another father? The answer was always no, because every human being born on this earth is going to have some developing to do, some problems to contend with. I thought there was enough excitement and beauty in our lives to make up for all the problems, that great country where I got to ride the range with you. That was a unique childhood. Getting to know horses. Punching cows in some of the most rugged and beautiful cattle ranges on earth.
DADDY: I never knew whether what I could offer you would be worth all the pain I caused you.
GERRY: You tried to give us girls a stable life, an education, opportunity, and some money you were able to accumulate from a lot of hard work.
DADDY: I tried to follow the example of my dad who tried to do the same for his kids. I felt the same about him, that I would not have picked another dad. Even though his flaws were many. I thought my flaws were worse than his, because I got addicted to alcohol, so young I hardly remember when I started. He sure could not understand that! Well, I never thought this talk would be so easy. I will try to come again some time. Before it is time to pick you up to ride the long long trail with me. Into another land just as beautiful. You will see.

Reading a book about Phoenix Serial killers, Dieteman and Hausner

I didn't really intend to spend part of the afternoon reading this book, but when I got to the theater I found out I had gone a week early! I did get in a nice walk and returned and picked up some books from the library. I saw the first book out I have seen on just two of three Phoenix Serial killers who terrorized Phoenix all at the same time called "A Sudden Shot" by Camille Kimball. One was a lone man who sometimes just raped women, but killed some, too. The other two, well, they are almost unbelievable in the amount of misery and grief they brought to this city all one year and more before they were finally caught.
Of course I followed the cases in the news as they happened during 2006, but reading about so many victims in a book really brought home to me how bad the carnage was. The pair were believed to have first started doing what they called 'recreational violence' and shot a lot of animals first. Imagine! They shot horses, a burro, and a number of dogs, and then they started in on people. However the trial suggests that Dale Hausner's brother was his partner in the early crimes, who is in prison for stabbing someone and may never be tried for these crimes. Dieteman came on to the scene after through first living with Jeff Hausner and then moving in with his brother Dale. Jeff Hausner referred to his younger brother as psychopath and appeared to want out of the rampages of unbelievable violence. Hausner gave Dieteman crystal meth who is reputed to cause the users to be more violent than most drugs. He did not drink alcohol as Dieteman did but appeared to be mostly a meth user, who said he bought it from people at work.
The shootings were just so frightening. If anyone was so imprudent as to be walking out fairly late at night, the chances of getting shot suddenly got astronomical. People often walk at night in Phoenix because it is impossible to walk far in the summer when it is a blistering 110 degrees or more. Many of the victims were just random people who for one reason or another were out walking fairly late at night.
It took a while for law enforcement to realize there was a pattern and what seemed like random shootings all over the city were related. Then fairly late on in their killing rampage they staged two fires at Walmart one after another, causing the store 25 million in damages. But an alert employee immediately started looking at surveillance cameras of which Walmart has many, and she spotted the same pair of men pushing a shopping cart close to the decoration department where the fires were set among plastic flowers. She saw smoke coming from this department shortly after the men were spotted on camera.
So a break finally came in the case, because at least two people who knew Dieteman recognized him and called the police from the number on billboards donated to give news and information to a city under siege. They also both reported that he had said some strange things about killing people, serial shootings, etc, which they both blew off as just drunken talk. One of the tips came from a man who had let him stay in his home several months before he left to room with the brother of the man who later became his partner in the serial killings, Dale Hausner.
This man's conscience finally got bothering him so badly after the pair shot a young woman in Mesa, learning disabled, who decided to slip out around 11pm and go to her friend's house a few blocks away. She became one of what turned out to be the last victims targeted by the killers in a deadly sport for 'fun.'
When you read about the sufferings of the victims, their inner organs torn up by bullets and shot gun pellets, it all comes home to you just how bad such crimes are. As a matter of fact one of the victims who barely survived now lives here in the Westward Ho, permanently disabled in a wheel chair. He went from a man in his late thirties with a job and good prospects deciding to walk to a convenience store for cigarettes to one hospitalized in a medically induced coma for months. He was well enough to attend the trial for the two men. He wanted to see these two convicted so badly that he did not miss a day at the trial until a stroke put him back into the hospital for a number of months.
The trial over, the two men sentenced, Patrick has been out of the hospital a few months and is living back here. In a miracle surgery his mother allowed the doctors to remove part of his skull so that the stroke with massive bleeding would not kill him. Many wanted to see this courageous man live after he had tried so hard to come back from the dead.
The manager has placed him and his mother in one of the few two bed room apartments in the complex. He will probably live out his days here.
He is not the first victim of a murderous attack who has lived here either. He is just one of the latest who was in the news during the trial.
I hate having to write about such terrible crimes, but sometimes it seems necessary just to keep track of the more criminal elements of our society. I had to note that tips from ordinary people who had encountered these men are who brought them down. They became upset at all the suffering they had caused and cooperated with the police.
One set up a meeting with undercover officers stationed around with listening devices, and what they heard left them and the tipster with no doubt they were dealing with one of the killers. He seemed to think he could talk about it rather freely to friends and acquaintances who appeared to think what he was saying so 'crazy' it could not be taken serious, but when they went to pick them up, they first rigged the apartment with listening devices and heard them discuss their killing activities, Dieteman angry because not enough 'kills' were attributed to them. He said 'we killed 35, not 27!' The police still don't know who all made up the 35. This man also said, "I am going to keep on until we kill 500!" But in spite of his chilling remarks, the cops came to think of Dale Hausner in his notorious 'silver camry' as the one who initiated the killing spree with a man too weak and raddled by substance abuse to resist the temptation to turn really evil.
The two had started off as a shoplifting team, so the apartment was full of stolen goods. Unbelievably Dale Hausner's little daughter only two years old, who had a serious birth defect, was staying with him at the time they were picked up. She had a feeding tube! The mother had never been in his apartment, but said she had to give him some rights to take the child for short periods of time for fear he would do worse. She was right, he would probably have killed her had she denied him access to the child. He had gotten to the point of being able to kill as though shooting cans at a firing range. Cold and seemingly devoid of recognizable human feelings.
She finally decided to try to get a judge to rescind his rights to take the child because of his behavior. Three weeks before he and Dieteman were arrested for all these killings, the judge turned down her request because he did not consider Dale Hausner 'violent!"
Which goes to show you that very often outside people with jurisdiction over these cases really have no idea how violent a spouse, a former BF, father of a child is. Actually it is the other partner who must find a way, initially to try to protect that child and themselves in the process.
The trial of these killers was on the news for months. Dale Hausner attempted his own defense and turned off his jurors even more with his attitude and lack of feeling. Being his own lawyer did him no good at all. He got a maximum sentence, death. He has not been executed yet, but because of his testimony against his partner, Dieteman's life was spared. He will instead stay in prison for the rest of his life.
I study true crime. I live in a violent city. It seems necessary to protect myself. I live in a complex where residents periodically become threatening or violent, but this complex seems relatively safe compared to the one on the west side where I lived for 13 years. I heard gunfire on a regular basis. I even saw people shot, and people I knew got shot. My nerves got extremely tattered. I was so relieved when I was finally able to move from there.
My poor daughter went to visit a friend and during the night half asleep she heard what she thought was gun fire. She ran out in the hallway with her little child hollering to her friend they had to get down, someone was driving by and shooting. Her friend had to sort of wake her up and reassure her that no, she was safe, there was no gunfire!
I felt bad. She was scarred by growing up in that violent neighborhood. I felt lucky my two kids and I got out of there alive. But people they knew got shot. Kids they went to school with.
Why did we live there? I was disabled. It was the only three bedroom apartment in HUD housing available to me. I tried another one and it frightened me so badly for my kids sake I felt there in two months. I knew I couldn't keep doing that. So we settled down in what seemed to be the safest location, prepared to 'take' what came, just like the rest of the neighborhood.
Two other women got shot there, mothers, by estranged husbands and BFs, the most common assailants. One was threatened with murder by his pals if she testified. The other one had 7 children and finally let her ex-husband take two of them. I think she thought it was better for the family if she did not get shot. But I wondered how badly they were scarred if the father they went to live with would take a shot at their mother because she did not want to let him have two of their children to live with him. He barely missed. The bullet hit the phone she had to her ear. She preferred not to think it was him, but I think she did not dare even express this suspicion out loud. The shooter was likely the one who was the angriest at her.
I dreamed about this shooting about a month ahead of time. I got several details in the dream, that it was in a part of a grocery store, that it was something deadly. I was scared to death. Made my daughter carry mace. Went to meet her when she only had to walk a block. I was always scared. I lived in a war zone.
That's why I still study true crime.

Spending time with son Raymond and Baby before he took off to Utah

Raymond picked me up around noon but realized he had forgotten an item he needed to his brother's house, so he drove back out to Gary's where I took these photos of Baby and one of Raymond and Baby. My son Dan visited with us briefly, so I got to see two sons!
That was a bonus.

I got to ask Dan what he wanted to do for his birthday coming up in a few days on the 24th of April. I did not get to pet or play with Baby as I hoped as it is getting very hot in Phoenix. Raymond threw her in Gary's pool to cool her off and then decided we had better go as he did not want to be on the road after dark. But we chatted all the way there and back.
The three brothers had a good time visiting. Raymond said he cooked dinner for them over the weekend, spaghetti I think. Raymond is a pretty good cook. In fact, he cooked for quite a spell in a restaurant when he started his working days in his teens. Gary also used to cook steaks at Pinnacle Peak for several years while he was a teen. Dan said they were short handed at his job and he had been having to work seven days.
I hope my grandson Dante is doing well in Calif. When school is out I don't know what he plans to do.
I had Raymond let me off at Walgreen's to get my meds and waved good-bye to him. He was eager to get out of town before our temp. hits 100! And I don't blame him. Only those who get to enjoy our wonderfully mild winters should have to put with such heat.
I came back home and watched the first episode of the Tudors, fourth season. 'The Young Victoria' is a movie I want to see that came out today. They say the period costumes are wonderful, and I love the English actors doing their own history. Doc asked me to shop for him so watching a costume drama on his big HD TV screen was my reward.
I read some more on my bio of Paul Dirac. That name is French even though his father taught in England, so that is where he grew up. His father was quite abusive to him and insisted he and Paul eat apart from the rest of the family and he was only allowed to speak French to him. His father was so suppressive that Paul thought he was mainly why his older brother who was intellectually less gifted than the physicist Dirac committed suicide at 25. He wanted to be a doctor which his father did not support. So all families have their struggles. Dirac was marked for life by this miserable childhood.
My kids and I always had a lot of fun. I tried to be a lot more relaxed mom than my dad was as a parent, despite his alcoholism, and my kids all pretty much decided what they wanted to be. There was no money to educate them with my disability, so they had to earn scholarships, etc. to pay for schooling. Dan went in the navy so he could get the college money they offered. A group of engineers starting up a construction company gave my son Gary the opportunity to learn to operate heavy equipment and before he was through he was their field supervisor of a number of jobs. He said he got the equivalent of an engineer's education on the job, learning to read blue prints and later on all the ins and outs of bidding jobs, but not quite the pay! Ronda was a merit scholar and earned a tuition scholarship all throughout college which is what Jamal has earned. They were both in the gifted classes.
So kids find a way to do what the want to do. When there is a will there is a way!
Tomorrow I am going to a musical at the Black Theater Company playhouse! Looking forward to it.
By the way there is a darling video on Sara's Blog on my blog list I got from Connie of her border collie Oreo. Sara says when she has a cold he likes to help them with their tissues, so he kept putting the tissues in the waste basket! This video is so cute. Since I did not get to play a lot with Baby, you might like to go there and see a very similar dog perform. I also found a blog of a woman who has a pet coyote! It is called 'The Daily Coyote' on m blog list. She has some great photos of it, and he also has a dog pal. I have never actually seen photos of a coyote someone successfully turned into a pet. I was fascinated reading about her history with him. A boy up home had pet coyotes he raised when their mother was killed, but he could not let them out of a cage or I believe the chickens would have been in dire danger!

Good talking necessary to lose weight, Kirstie and Oprah!

I made this video because I have been watching Kirstie Alley's show about losing weight. She involves her son and daughter, the Mexican lady who does her laundry and keeps house, her handyman Jim who is her 'chubby pal' agreeing to lose weight with her, her two assistants, her trainer she hired to help her and Jim exercise, and others. Oh, and she has about four or five of the most interesting lemurs she keeps in cages outside of her beautiful home. So far we have gone hiking with her and yesterday her assistants caught her chubby pal Jim cheating by sneaking out to buy burgers. He still loses more weight than she does. Yesterday she went on Oprah and talked about her weight loss program.
Today she was supposed to be changing places with some of these people who work for her to show she used to do their jobs, but I couldn't stand watching the boss pretend to be the help.
What I have to say to Kirstie (and Oprah) is that her weight loss program does not provide enough intellectual stimulus for her or for us. She does not have an enough of an in depth conversation with anybody except her kids. I could not stand to live like that. And I don't get nearly enough intellectual stimulus even though I work very hard at it.
They throw a surprise birthday party for Kirstie, and John Travolta and his wife Kelly Preston even show up, but they bring her a beautiful necklace, but nobody said anything intellectually stimulating, I swear.
I relate to Kirstie. She weighed just a trifle more than I do when she started this reality show to lose weight. We are sisters in substance abuse, but I could never lose weight or keep it off with her program. Let's see I went searching for intellectual stimulus today and this is what I found. I went down to Doc's but he wanted me to to help him do his online banking! I told him I don't even do online bill pay because I can't stand to. I promised to try and he insulted me so I got up and marched out. So he called later and apologized for being a jerk and he said he called his bank and a woman is going to talk him through the steps tomorrow. I think that is wonderful. She will intellectually stimulate his brain a lot more than I will who don't even know how to do it. He is hardly computer practiced at all, but that won't matter. She has probably got lots of patience (more than I do).
Let's see, I went to my volunteer job in the video library hoping for intellectual stimulus there, but nobody showed up. I finally connected around 1pm but another volunteer came for her shift, so I left promising to return next week to volunteer.
At around 1:30 Victor introduced me to a lovely woman who is going to do a project here come summer taking photos of us. She asked me if I wanted my photo taken now. I had the outfit on I wear in this video and she thought it was very attractive. She also loved the black cap I was wearing outside. So we went out to the patio to take the photo with me sitting on some stair steps. I had a wonderfully stimulating talk with her. You can't believe what we got talked about. Within minutes we shared the most intimate and saddest details of our lives. Time was of the essence. We had to hurry. I gave her my links to my blog, Youtube Channel, and told her I was on Facebook, too. She promised to be back this summer. I hope the photo turns out well.
I went over to the ladies seated in the patio but they were busy playing dominoes, so I did not disturb them. I don't care for dominoes as it is not intellectually stimulating enough for me. I prefer scrabble.
I went back to my apartment and called my son Raymond who suggested we get together tomorrow morning for coffee again. I eagerly agreed. I know he will be very intellectually stimulating. I can't wait.
I then discovered that my sister Linda, the poet and artist who mostly sculptures, had posted 59 photos of her subjects and art work on Facebook. They will be public. If you have a Facebook account you can go see them under the name of Linda King and you will be very intellectually stimulated by them, I promise you. Her blog is Vooman's Voice on my blog list. She posts some very interesting poems there.
I checked my blog several times and discovered DB had posted an entry quite long, in which he quoted a TS Elliot poem! Jackpot!! Very intellectually stimulating this guy. Check Vagabond Journeys on my blog list.
I was still needing more, more, so I did not know what to do. I was finally forced to contact a spirit who turned out to be an ex cop I know. He said he would come and try to have a conversation with me as he was fascinated with communicating on several levels. So we discussed that for a while and that took about an hour. I still was not tired and I needed more, so I decided to check out one of my old telepathic connections on this side. That is someone who is gifted at telepathy and you can contact any time you want and have a conversation of the mind with them. They can do this, believe me. I am sure you don't believe me, but I have had many telepathic conversations with this guy. I have known about 3 different guys in my lifetime who were very good at this. It is necessary to meet up every once in a while and talk for real so to be sure you are not imagining things. And that you do have this connection. Even then you will not be sure it is real, but if the telepathic conversation stimulates you it is real enough!
I sent several e-mails to my sister Ann about all this, who does not need to communicate as much as I do, but she does plenty. I did not know where she was all day but I am sure she was out communicating.
I think I might be able to sleep now, but not before I post this entry to tell you about my day. You can see why it is hard for me to get every day filled.
Oh yes, I read about an hour on a bio I checked out of the library by Graham Farmelo called The Strangest Man. It is described as 'The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom.' I love reading about great physicists like Paul Dirac who won a Nobel Prize for his work when he was quite young. I do not understand quantum mechanics but I am fascinated with people who do. I felt sorry for his poor father who was taking classes to try to understand an iota of his son's thinking. His mother didn't understand him, nor did his sister. I doubt if his wife did, since his peers were people like Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Wolfgang Pauli. I read a book about Pauli and Jung and their relationship a while back. I find this bio about Dirac absolutely fascinating even though I am totally unable to understand the extremely advanced mathematics he uses to develop his theories. No, but he does understand and it is so stimulating to me to know that there are people who do understand the mystery of the atom. Etc. Only physicists understand each other. I have always been awed in the presence of great minds. My mind gets stretched reading about these great thinkers. Hey folks I have a pygmy brain compared to these physicists. That's a humbling thought.

MEMOIRS--Chapter 20--Danger in Boulder, trouble with dying, both my dad and me

DAUGHTERS OF THE SHADOW MEN

Chapter twenty

During the summer Margie and I headed off down through the pasture to Grandma's house. We had to walk through Grandpa's lower half of the pasture to get to the gate leading down the sandy hill to the ranch house. A black milk cow with a crooked horn hated kids, and when she spotted us she would let out a little beller and start running toward us, so we had to keep an eye out for her to make sure we could make it to the fence before she caught up with us.
Then when we got to Grandma's house we would have to climb on the fence and then start calling for Grandma to come out and hold old Jack, the dog, so we could proceed on into the house safely. Jack hated kids, too, but we were determined to visit Grandma, so we weren't going to let the animals who didn't like kids stop us. Grandma would always feed us supper and after a while Mother got tired of us saying we had already eaten supper and forbid us to eat supper to Grandma's any more. I could not give up my supper to Grandma's for anything, so when I went by myself, I would still eat supper to Grandma's and come home and eat another supper so Mother would not get mad.
Well, the summer I turned ten I encountered another dangerous animal in the pasture, quite unexpectedly. This time I was riding a horse bareback heading for the gate to Grandpa's pasture. Suddenly Cecil, Grandpa's main hired man now, appeared on foot and stopped me. He said 'How about a ride?” Before I could say anything he jumped up on the horse behind me and the next thing I knew he put his hands around my waist as though to hang on and moved them up and began to fondle my little button breasts. Was I alarmed! I had not even gone into puberty yet and did not expect to for another two or three years. I was nothing but a child. I thought that Cecil knew this was an unacceptable act of aggression, but his resentment of my dad's status as a privileged King's son found outlet in scaring me. That was just about as far as he was thinking. My dad would just have sneered at him had he tried to express his feelings about the unfairness of life to him. He could hurt Daddy far worse through doing something unacceptable to his daughter! He was mad enough that what he might pay for such an act did not penetrate. He only thought he would restore a sense of power to the powerless. To me this was another version of Bill and his motives all over again.
Cecil jumped off the horse to tend the water leaving me to wonder how I could protect myself from still another predator. Cecil was loved by his sisters. He was handsome, a skilled cowboy, but still opportunity was limited for a cowboy unless he could somehow come by some land and cattle. Only that year I had come to love Cecil's oldest sister Ruby who became our baby sitter. I was happy now when both Mother and Dad took off on a trip and left us with Ruby who would tend the store and spend the night, cooking delicious meals for us.
I didn't see how I could upset her by telling anyone about her brother's rather frightening transgression down in the fields. What would he do next? I decided I could not be going down through the pasture alone where he could very well be tending water. It was not safe. He hadn't done enough for me to raise a hallabaloo about it as I saw it. I just would not be able to explain how dangerous I thought this gesture meant, and what it signaled in Cecil's control over his emotions.
Not that Daddy was doing any better with his control over his horribly destructive drinking. I think this was the year that he perforated an ulcer while he and a hired man were on a trip to Richfield to get feed, among other supplies. He was helping lift a hundred pound sack of feed, when he said later he felt the tear, and the next thing he knew he was throwing up blood.
If he had not been within a block of the Richfield hospital the doctors said he would have died. As it was they had a difficult time saving him, the ulcer had been so large he perforated. He had to stay in the hospital two weeks after they got the bleeding stopped. Even when they let him come home, he was so white he reminded me of a corpse. I knew very well he had barely escaped with his life.
But wouldn't you know it, this did not stop his drinking. Oh he went easy for a while, and every little while he would come in and take soda water if he felt any pain. Unbelievably he was able to heal up his ulcers in this fashion, that and trying to eat when he was drinking so the stomach acid would not burn another hole. He never had another problem with a bleeding ulcer, but he still had crisis after crisis with his drinking. He was coming to the end of his drinking days whether he wanted to accept it or not. He was going to have to quit or die.
I got used to Mother saying the doctors did not give him another year to live the way he was drinking. I did not know what would happen to the family if he died. It was going to be terrible. I thought if only Daddy will realize how devastated we daughters will be, maybe he will attempt to do the impossible.
I am sure as a result of this additional stress in my life that winter I came down with a strange childhood disease. Nobody else in town got it. Mother called my teacher Jean Hansen to come and look at me. I broke out in a fine rash and had the usual terrible headache and fever. I remember I felt the most resentment when I was the sickest and went out and told Mother visiting in the store and she said for me to take an aspirin and go back and lay down. She would never sit with the sick. She was too impatient. I felt sorry for myself as I suffered through the afternoon alone.

Jean Hansen thought I might have scarlet fever but it wasn't bad enough so maybe it was scarlatina, apparently a milder form of the childhood disease that used to kill kids. Not bad enough! I thought it was bad enough. I had a bad feeling about this disease. Especially when my skin all peeled off in big long strips. That was very weird. Nobody had ever seen that symptom before.
Sure enough that summer after Leah Coleman announced she had to quit working for Mother to get ready to move to Salt Lake I started with terrible fatigue early in the morning, so bad I could hardly drag myself out of bed, even when I was expected to work hard all day. The bottling season was on. That was work that could not be put off. I could not afford to be sick. I could be dying but the bottling still needed to be done so we would have food for winter.
I got through rest of the summer the best I could now contemplating the idea that maybe I had leukemia or rheumatic heart disease. I had gone out up and stayed a week with my Aunt Vesta after she suffered the tragic loss of her first child who only lived a few hours after a very hard birth.
I met a little girl my age while there who had been spending a year in bed with rheumatic fever. She could not go to school. She could barely play. We did play, but when I started having chronic fatigue symptoms in the last month of summer I thought of how horrible it would be to get confined to bed, staying home with Mother! I could not bear the thought. So this problem was just not anything I was going to discuss with my parents. They could not be expected to handle it well either.
I decided I would just go ahead and die when the time came. Until that happened I intended to keep going, riding horses and attending school as long as possible. To my relief I revived when I got to sit down most of the day when school started. My fatigue finally eased, but it was a warning. I was beginning to be a little fragile. I was going to have to be careful. But what could I do? I would be very apt to start dragging again the following summer when the work all started.
I had known that disease was not a good sign. No child in town had more stress than I did, with molesters, a father who was not normal and was trying to kill himself as a result, and an impatient mother who was not happy so took out her misery on the children of the one to blame. I did not think Mother was a whole lot different than the other predators, getting back at his children by being cruel because she was so mad at Daddy for not quitting drinking and being a good husband.
I thought she did not know how impossible that would be for him. I did not think he could change. From what I could gather from all my reading, he was pretty much set in his feelings at his age. I had already read The Grapes of Wrath when I was still eight. I preferred intelligent writers like Steinbeck. You were apt to learn something about adult problems from him. It was rare though for even the best novelists to say a lot about homosexuality. It just wasn't written about either, let alone talked about. You would think it did not even exist, and poor Daddy was committing suicide over being one, I was sure. What on earth could be done to save him?

Header Boulder terrain with our place just across the road below the pond in the center. Daddy in Boulder, riding Dinah. Picture of Mother's store building taken after it changed hands. The house in Boulder after trees grew up around it, and Daddy's barn. Last photo is of the El Cow Rancho Motel Mother and Dad built across the road north from the house. Mother is standing in the doorway of her store.