Dante on FB commenting on photos all night and other thoughts keeping me awake

Dante and his little brother and sister, Rosa Bella and Carlos.
Todays photo of me in white lace and same white hat taken by Doc who is extremely hung over from celebrating too long with a big binge. He is not even drinking anything with alcohol in it.


I got up in the night to check out my blog and found 21 messages mostly from Dante on my photos on Facebook. He's in California but was apparently up all night thinking up funny comments to put on his photos. I am glad he got around to them. His mother has also put up a lot of photos on FB featuring him and he was responding to them, too. Dante has always been a very funny kid. He was my best entertainment from the time he was big enough for me to go get him on the bus and bring him home to spend the day and usually the night. I collected a lot of Dante stories during those years. There were no other little kids in his mother's family for a long time, so Dante, like most first born, soon found his calling in making the adults laugh, but his humor was usually quite 'adult' as a result. He was also always trying to figure his dad out as he was not with him at birth and when Dante finally did meet up with him when he was around three he was baffled about how to get along with him as his dad did not think some of the antics he had gotten away with under his mother's care was the right way for a boy his age to act. Dan was in the navy at the time so he didn't hesitate to apply discipline with a military flavor. In fact, I am sure he could not help himself. So Dante would vent to me about his dad, and some of the best discussions we ever had were with the three of us, him, his dad, and me trying to see eye to eye instead of just clashing.
Although Dan and Dante's mother, Angelina, have been separated some years and she has two younger children, they are still good friends. In fact Dan just helped her to get a car as the old car he had given her just completely ran down and she was in danger of not being able to pay her bills because of not getting to work. Angelina has always been a kind girl which is why I am sure he has continued to help her. If she were not kind he would not be doing it I am sure. The father of her two younger children has been out of work for a long time. His unemployment benefits were extended, but he is probably not going to be able to go back to work as an operator because construction in Arizona is still very slow.
My son Gary helped his company get a big construction job just recently that saved him from being laid off too, and he has rarely ever been laid off in all his years of construction work in Arizona. Dan works for the Sheraton as a tech guy for conventions, etc. and business drops way off in the summer, so he is going to go to Utah where it is nice and cool to see what he can do until business picks back up again.
Dante is still in Calif. and it sounds like he has found some work over there after school let out, so will probably stay there at least for a while. Sounds like he is having fun, too.
I have been going down to the patio as I knew people were coming down there hoping to get a little holiday fun going. Some hardy souls are even swimming in our big pool. I have to wait until toward the later part of June before the heat at night has warmed up that big pool enough for me not to have a chill going in it.
One elevator has been down so we have been going up and down the one remaining one that runs, usually packed to the gills. If you are not extremely tolerant you would have a bad time living here. There is nothing like literally rubbing shoulders to get home.
I think of the arguments going on between the republicans and the democrats with the democrats generally accusing the republicans of being intolerant and stupid. The word stupid is one I never use living in public housing. Them is fighting words, man.
Living in public housing calls for tolerance to the max. I was having a discussion with a gay bi polar guy and the son of Navaho Dave and a guy we used to call Druggie Dave because he had been in a coma so many times. Now he's amazingly clean and sober. Daniel was talking about having to go bi polar on somebody. Then later on I came back down and was talking to another gal named Ronda and we got to sharing our troubles with abusive husbands and BFs, and the guy were talking to had just been accused of being abusive to his GF who moved out. I knew that so I was trying not to get too carried away since he was one of THEM. But he is very lonely after having been in a relationship for about a year, so I knew he would be less apt to blow up if he could talk to someone.
Navaho Dave's son and I got to talking about the Hopi-Navaho dispute over land that has been going on many years. His mother is Hopi. He talked about going down to a protest where he was mistaken for Hispanic so he had to tell them he was Native American and his views were different on illegals. When you look at it that way the native Indian tribes were struggling with illegal immigrants for years bent on taking possession of the land where they had been living for hundreds of years until the whole country got overrun and many native tribes were practically exterminated. We certainly can't be too proud of our dealings with American Indians. I recall well the sentiment that many were fond of expressing, "the only good Indian is a dead Indian."
Arizona was the place where the feared Indian Geronimo tried to take out as many whites as he could when he became enraged. There was probably no more feared Indian ever than this Apache who with a small band managed to strike terror in the heart of would be settlers in Arizona for years.
I don't like it when either the republicans or the democrats lose their tempers and their tolerance and call each other names for this is counterproductive and can only lead to worse results, since progress can only happen if enough of our citizens work together to bring it about.
I don't believe in calling anyone stupid. As a matter of fact, calling people stupid in public housing is just about the most counter productive thing I can think of. Looking down on people because they have not gone to college as you have and may not read books. Common ground can always be found and I do not see many people calling each other names like stupid in a seriously insulting way. In fact, I find that people living in public housing are usually wonderfully tolerant of each others differences. Disability or whatever has brought them here causes them to feel they are underdogs so they become keenly conscious of the hurtful effects of slights.
And we have all races here and I have enjoyed discussion with many, a black ex cab driver, a bi polar gay guy, an old lady originally from Austria going blind and in a wheel chair, a younger woman lame from the effects of heavy chemo for breast cancer causing neuropathy in her feet. Neuropathy is very common in causing many to have to go to a wheel chair or scooter.
Democrats are generally the ones calling the republicans stupid because of republicans like Glen Beck and Russ Limbaugh both of whom have been guilty of making fun of presidents' children they don't like. I think the best thing you can do when someone like that loses their temper and judgment and says such a thing is ignore them as fast as possible, talk about something more productive. I don't even think guys like that are worth talking about. Democrats themselves are probably going to cause them to get more attention by focusing on them for far too long when they say something so very wrong.
I say move on as fast as possible to more productive subjects. A man who is guilty of using children in his battle to hurt and upset is not worthy of attention. The outrage can be noted, briefly, in my opinion, but such republicans have seized power for themselves and just by virtue of saying such outrageous things they keep it, if people let them.
By the same token when I think democrats are being too mean in their criticisms I move on from them, too. I do not give them the power of snaring my attention for such. I will not engage in discussion with them if they are not tolerant and civil enough, any more than I will with republicans who say stuff I can't stand.
If we hold everyone to a standard of good behavior, not just the party we don't like, but members of the party we do, too, we are going to get better behaving citizens all the way around which we sorely need when we are handling difficult issues like immigration.
We all know parents who act like their kids can do no wrong and are afraid to discipline them and expect them to act civil. You get some very unruly law breaking kids if you do that.
I am a registered democrat, pro life, which means I have had a lot of arguments with democrats who were pro choice. However I still stick firmly to my registration as a democrat because I believe in the Civil Rights act and think we have to have it for our nation to progress. We do have a melting pot type of population, so if we discriminate we are going to do grievous wrong to some people who don't deserve it. I always thought that equality for blacks was going to be achieved with great difficulty just because they started out in the country as slaves and regarded by many people as 'inferior' and incapable of interactin on the same level as their white superiors. A lot of people have had to sacrifice their lives to try to get rid of this concept which was going to mean cruel treatment for blacks forever if these attitudes were not changed, and changing such attitudes is hard to do. So discrimination still keeps cropping its head up, and this battle must be fought again and again when it occurs.
Obama is subject to subtle discrimination and not so subtle, some that is down right ugly which I would have to call racial prejudice in essence still alive and well in America.
However I did not vote for Obama because he was so strongly pro choice in his campaign. I will not vote for a candidate for that reason. I voted for John McCain and George Bush because they were pro life. George Bush is a man that the democrats have practically pronounced retarded. As though that was an awful crime. As I said there are many people who could be said to be less intelligent than others but who are still capable of being elected by running a campaign that appeals to enough people. I would say that his capability to be a good president was hurt by the smear campaign from the democrats that went too far in vilifying him on the basis of being 'retarded.' This showed prejudice on their part against the less intelligent, a tendency to be extremely nasty about something no person can help any more than they can help the color of their skin. We do not always get a brilliant president. I didn't think Reagan was all that intelligent but he was a very pleasing speaker who united people. In fact he lapsed into Alzheimer's before he even left office. Reagan however was capable of being faithful and devoted to his wife Nancy, while the brilliant John Kennedy acted like he had no sense whatsoever when it came to his marriage. I thought his affairs while his poor wife was pregnant were appalling as though he did not know that was wrong. His 'ruthless' philandering father was given the blame, but brilliant men can do some very stupid things, too.
Clinton is touted as being a brilliant man but look what an utterly stupid thing he did that almost got him impeached.
George Bush went through his term without doing anything anybody could prove to make his lovely wife Laura look bad. But he is given no credit for that.
I was appalled at him for getting us into a war with Iraq without enough justification, but thought he should win the second time so he could deal with what he had caused.
I would hate to have some of the democrats who have been so nasty about George's intelligence teaching my poor little retarded kids. They sound too vicious. And I have trouble thinking they could love some of these poor uneducated primitive illegals from Mexico very much either. Some seem to love in principle but have no tolerance for lack of intelligence when it comes right down to the flesh. You won't find them hanging out with illegals or having to go up in one elevator with all kinds rubbing shoulders and being polite. If they can't be polite on paper how could they be polite in person? An elitist discriminates against people with lesser intelligence. And that is real discrimination, too. How can you be taken serious elegantly discussing the fine points of civil rights when you are totally unable to tolerate anybody you think is 'stupid'?
So there is a lot of intolerance going on in the democratic party, too. I am sure many a republican has smarted and stung from having it implied he or she is one of the many stupid ones this party can boast.
It is a difficult task to keep detecting intolerance even in ourselves. So now I will get off my soapbox and try to get some more sleep!

Memorial weekend Sunday news

Doc finally sobered up from his week long drinking binge to just his normal intoxicated state. You may not have been able to detect it but in those two videos he was extremely drunk. A few days of associating with him when he's like that I am ready for the booby hatch. I certainly appreciated the viewer who commented that these were tragic videos which they are when you think of this scene duplicated all over America with families, kids, mates, GFs, etc, coping with an alcoholic in the family, or in worst case scenarios, two alcoholic parents, and I have known families where a couple or three kids joined in, too.
Doc was complaining today that his old drinking buddy knocked on his door last evening for the third time this week hoping to share a few 'brewskies' with him. He said, 'he doesn't know when to quit!" And I thought, "A-Amen!"
Of course, Doc, like a lot of drunks, including my dad, always uses holiday for an excuse to get really plastered. As if the veterans and all those we are trying to remember here need that to remember them. But that's what drinkers do.
Doc, fortunately has a rare sense of humor, and is always ready to laugh at himself even as you feel like crying at the waste of talent, energy, and brain power.
My son Raymond caught up with the blogging world with two entries, the first in some weeks. In this last one called, "Beware the Jobberwocky, my son" on my blog list, Cowboys and Bohemians, he describes waking up in a dark place, which of course drives many a person to drink so as to medicate, but now he is attempting to struggle through these dark moods without benefit of alcohol.
I can't say that I have experienced many of those dark moods since I committed myself to living up to my convictions and through a near death experience that resulted, I was able to get a sense of reality of the place we call by many names-eternity, the hereafter, spirit world, but where we go when the body has ceased to function. I have experienced stepping out of it like it was an old shoe to be tossed aside, no longer necessary to my existence, but then slipping back into it when death retreated to come another day.
For I think that many of our dark moods come because we do not feel we can connect to people. I learned through these near death experiences to reach out to the other side when I got to feeling extremely low and dispirited on this side. There guardian angels would be keeping watch and would respond with their company to get me through the bad times, so I could better complete my mission on earth.
So I learned to keep paper and pen handy so I could record the many dialogues I had with these helping spirits. I would not experience dangerous lows if I reached out to them.
But if there is such a break in faith that the alcohol and other dangerous substances are sought, then it will be impossible to believe in and access spirit help. Many alcoholics, drug abusers, even smokers, and eaters such as myself, will sometimes reach for the substance before they can put into place this connection between here and there as I think we are meant to do so we will be better prepared for our passing.
I always enjoy the spirit dialogues so much if I can just manage to get them going before succumbing to temptation. I am doing better with my eating binges but not before gaining too much weight that is affecting my knees and my mobility. The pool will soon be warm enough for me to go in there to exercise better. The more hardy souls here are starting to swim now. That will be so good for them, since so many have succumbed to the need or the luxury of riding about in a scooter, which is prone to cause mobility to deteriorate!
I had such a powerful connection yesterday to one of my cousins, a former Mormon Bishop, who went to the other side a few months ago. I do not think I will have the energy to connect again like that today, even though I have not done honor to those in my family who served in the military, especially one who died in World War II, Uncle Crae. Many times it has been conveyed to me in messages that his work ever since has been with dying soldiers, helping them to accept what has happened to them. He is still working in that capacity today as it seems like our country is always engaged in a war that requires the sacrifice of some of our young soldiers' lives, and today it is Afghanistan where the killing fields are.
It is a tradition in Utah for families to go to the cemeteries and decorate the graves of all those who have passed as it is all over the land. Thus remembering all the dead, especially those who died too soon and might still be living if some sad circumstance had not taken them. My sister's son-in-law had a sister die unexpectedly, so they had to attend her services before going to Boulder to decorate the rest of the graves. She was only in her early fifties, so I am sure that her family will feel she went too soon.
My own sister LaRae is often with me in spirit who we all felt died too soon at the age of 51. It won't take a lot of energy to connect to her, so perhaps she will say something on this Memorial Sunday.
LARAE: I am busy going about recognizing people's thoughts who are thinking about the dead on our day, but I am here to say that there are a lot of idle moments spent in life that could be put to better use connecting up to the dead, not just on Memorial Day but every day. The worst thing that is happening now days is that so many are dying with no belief system at all so they are incredibly hard to get back up on their feet and going again. They actually come here comatose with mental illness. It is very disheartening to see so many mentally ill because their spirit is in such bad shape. This could be remedied by a great deal more active thinking life. If your spirit is in bad shape when you die you can expect months of recovery in a hospital life setting. Before you will be strong enough spiritually to resume any kind of life in the spirit world. Belief can only grow strong with exercise! So if you have some kind of belief system that does not include life after death in spirit form it would be best to consider a change. There is nothing harder than trying to get someone back on their feet who is very confused about where they are, what they are made of, as so many times if they still retrain consciousness after death they become delusional and think they have not died but are still alive being held captive against their will somewhere or they have gone mad or so on, which are common delusions after death.
GERRY: I first heard of this from our Grandma King who came to me in a dream to comfort me for having undergone such an ordeal in a mental hospital. She said that she had to stay in a mental hospital about five months or so. She said in the dream that they have those there to help people after they die who are mentally confused as she was. She said that she was there because she did not understand why her sons had to die before she did or were mentally ill or about to die as our dad was.
LARAE: Yes, our grandma is very strong now and a great comfort to me. I go to see her often as she is very understanding of the melancholy I feel from being separated from my family at times. I did not get to have the long life that so many of the Kings enjoyed. I died along about the same age as her two sons did, from 45 to 51, and her other son even younger at 22 of an alcohol related death. As did another cousin and grandson. I felt bilimia started in high school began my decline in health and led to other self destructive things I did. I started with bad food binges which I would throw up. Sounds like a simple thing but over the years it can become detrimental to the health, both mental and physical. I relate to these sons and grandsons who died of their excess drinking and rebellious ways.
GERRY: What seems like a small thing, overeating, can become a very big thing if it gets into bilimia is what you are saying?
LARAE: Yes, I also had the idea that it would be such a disgrace to gain weight, get fat, so I could never stand to leave any excess food I had eaten in my stomach until I threw it up. In other words, if I could get out of it, I was not going to accept the consequence of weight gain. I did not see throwing up as detrimental to my health at the time. I thought I could take that risk, but when the bilimia got out of control as it did again in my forties, I did not see that I would be losing valuable nutrients that would keep me healthy, so I see this as leading directly to an unhealthy body that eventually could not throw off a cancer threat, and that is how I succumbed, by just taking too many chances with my health and not giving myself the normal healthy advantage of a body that could fight the invasion of cancer cells. This is something most people take for granted because they have an instinct they listen to that tells them throwing up food is not a good idea. I was part of a crowd that were all doing it, so we got swept along, only I became one of the worst because I was more of an extremist than they were. I was the victim of an addiction as well as any of the other family members who died. I went to extremes and paid the price for it. The family did not realize how dangerous what I was doing was, and so I got into a worse and worse state of health without even recognizing I was there until it was too late!
GERRY: Sounds about like what it was.
LARAE: I put my bilimia into the dangerous addiction category now, but didn't then even though I became some alarmed that I was so out of control at an older age with it.
GERRY: Thanks for talking to us about addiction. Seems like every holiday is a day for addictions.

Memorial weekend and visit with the dead

"Remember" by Connie
Starting off Memorial weekend I had a visit with two spirits who have gone to the other side. One was Homer, my first cousin who is the brother of Howard, my cousin that I found out had passed also, not too long after Homer did.
Memorial weekend seems like a prime time for any kind of medium to connect to those who have gone on as we think of them as alive and active not really 'dead dead'.
I had a good visit talking to Homer who is also a former Mormon Bishop about Mormons expectation of a Mormon heaven where some will be more exalted than others. I have always thought that this idea was too elitist and played out in real life with Mormons only associating with the best Mormons and letting all the problem people in the family just go hang.
I went down to visit the alcoholic today as it is my contention that alcoholics need to be visited just like other people if you expect them to make any progress toward sobriety. It is my experience that sometimes there has to be years of building them up before you can realistically expect change, so you have to learn to be patient with how long it takes to affect them. Now in Mormonism good Mormons tend to give the alcoholics in the family short shrift but this really does not have a good result because an alcoholic relative's death can pull the whole family down and gives that family a black eye for not being able to prevent the death or suicide or accidental death just by not making any effort.
I was absolutely determined I was going to prevent my dad's death as long as possible, especially after his older brother was found dead in circumstances that strongly suggested suicide. I knew the threat was very real when it came to my dad, too. Since Doc is very intelligent I know that a lot of these visits and talks we have are having their effect even if no change is registering. The one thing that is not going to bring about change is no effort.
I do think that a family is kind of a loose plan for some individuals to come down and try to care about each other from birth, but of course many times this plan goes awry as one or another family member tries the rest of the family to the max. It is easy to give up on a member when they do that. But I think it is always best to have a conference and see if other ideas can be tried with more effectiveness.
I know without even having to talk to them that Doc's parents are very grateful for any intervention on his behalf.
I think that any religion should be developed with the whole family in mind, and if it results in cutting off members that religion should be strongly questioned and reined in for not living up to the family plan! However it is very tempting for family members to develop religion to accommodate their own inclinations. In other words religion is shaped to fit the easy way rather than the hard way, so for this reason I think heaven will come as a jolt to many who are imagining heaven will be elitist, too, and the more difficult family members will be shut out there too.
If that were the case all rich and prosperous people would go to heaven and only associate with each other. As they so often do here.
It is for a good reason rich family members don't like to associate with poor members as that is always a reminder that some are not as fortunate as others and then questions must be asked as to how this came about.
In America, the land of opportunity, doing well financially has been regarded as a reward for industry, but sometimes it is just good luck, while someone else's luck might be equally bad with developing a disability or something of that nature. That is going to limit their chances of success not matter what effort they make. Much of their energy might be used just in surviving their disability.
Like the victim who lives in here of the serial killer in Phoenix who went from being a young man in his thirties with health and prospects suddenly cut down and paralyzed from the bullets of an assassin. Just like the policeman was killed yesterday in his late twenties by another assassin.
Today I noticed the most moving memorial tributes were for him, a policeman living his life on the front lines just as a soldier does, risking being maimed or killed outright every single day he goes on shift.
Since the battlefields where a policeman dies are right here and I have lived in one of the worst war zones in the city I have a special feeling about policemen who are sometimes the only ones standing between you and the assassins' bullets. They are there to take the bullet for you.
I am going to pay a visit this coming visit to Paul, the victim of the serial killer. His mother, Mary, invited me to come up and talk to him, even though he is still having seizures of the waking sort, but has been warned they may get worse as he gets older. I am looking forward to talking to Paul and maybe having a discussion with him about crime in the city.
I am always looking for people who are willing and able to talk about the problems here on earth in a lucid and controlled way. So many lose their tempers when they are dealing with a problem person here, and then the problem person feels assaulted and has to go file a report on them, and then management has to have a talk with them to try to encourage them to hold on to their own tempers when dealing with violence so they don't become as violent as the person they are complaining about. I was talking to a woman who said if a person in here made her mad she would just as soon kill them as look at them! So what happens is we have a whole lot of people losing their tempers before you can say boo. You just can't talk long to anybody who has lost their temper even if they are started off being the victim. It gets to be quite a circus in here I must say.
So as I told Doc this is why I often have to turn to the spirits now days just to get a more controlled conversation. Most of the time here if you talk to someone about their religion, almost anything, they will immediately lose their tempers and the conversation is over, period.
So it was a real treat to me to be able to talk to Homer after he had gone to the other side and had some counseling. It would not have been possible for him to talk to me on this side without him losing his temper very shortly. Homer, you please explain how this came about as you were a Mormon Bishop and could be expected to keep your temper if anyone could.
HOMER: I have to admit that I got to losing my temper more and more, Gerry, and would not have been able to talk to you very long while still there without losing it. I would have been after you to get active and get your temple work done. I was really big on getting everyone's temple work done, even if they were somewhat reluctant, so it has come as a big adjustment to come here and find out temple work is not as highly regarded. I was shocked. I felt I had been told that temple work was very important and I had made a lot of effort to convince everyone to get it done. I just could not believe that someone was now telling me well, they have sort of changed their idea here and are not emphasizing that any more. I was furious and said I want to talk to people in higher authority. I just will not accept this. If temple work does not mean anything then I am in the wrong place! I felt I was getting the run around and people were trying to keep me out of the degree of heaven I had earned. As you know Mormons preach there are three degrees of heaven and I was aiming for the highest one.
GERRY: Hmm, well I hardly dare say anything for fear of running afoul of Mormon authority. However I do think that this was a case of the Mormon religion getting overloaded with ideas that were really contrary to what heaven should be about in my opinion. It should not be an elitist thing that you can achieve just by going through a ceremony in a temple. It should be through good deeds. So I thought ceremony had come to mean more than good deeds, to me, always a bad sign in religion. Which is why I gave up the Mormon religion. I felt that it would not get me to heaven, only good deeds would. But I knew you cousins who had risen to higher levels in the Mormon church would not agree with me. So our talks never even got off the ground because I knew you would not agree with say how I thought that the troubled members of the family addicted to alcohol should be regarded and treated.
HOMER: I know you think the more controlled members who weren't addicted to alcohol should continue to make efforts to reach and talk to the troubled member.
GERRY: The Kings had so many alcoholics among them I thought that the non afflicted members should make a special effort to learn about how to struggle with alcohol addiction. Instead of just abandoning the family member completely which inevitably meant abandoning their children also. I left Aunt Neta's for example because I was unable to talk to her or any other church members about how alcohol affected my dad, her brother, and what I was worried about and what had already happened. I did attempt on other occasions to get better acquainted with you and Howard, her sons, but she seemed to feel that the less you had to do with such members the better off you would be, so I am sure she counseled abandonment more or less of her family which she also abandoned. I was never able to talk to her in the two years I lived with her about any of my problems which is one reason I left. She expected me to just live there without talking about them. I could not do that, so I left to see if I could perhaps get more help down to Salt Lake from some of Mother's side of the family. They weren't too helpful either since they had had little experience with alcoholics. Our cousin Richard, of course, I eventually found out had become a bad alcoholic in the service.
HOMER: Yes, Richard and Howard and I were raised like brothers, but I did not even visit him even though he was like a brother to me because he had rejected the church. Married outside the church. Then I thought inevitably took to drink. I thought abandonment was best, but now I can see that he felt resentful of me because I did not make time even for him. Who was like a brother to me. I hardly even made time for Howard, but I thought that we would progress as we should if we stayed active in the church and administered to our brothers and sisters in the church. Yes, I took brother and sisters to be who I was supposed to care about now because they had not rejected the true gospel. Well, Richard argued that this was not necessarily the true gospel, and so did his wife. I admit I did not know what to do about a cousin raised like my brother when he left the church. I worked and worked and finally got him to do his temple work before he died and now he tells me it was not fair to his young wife and he should not have left her feeling she is obligated to stay single even though he has died and she is apt to live years longer. And his old wife who had died before he did which is how he came to marry this young woman told me that the temple work was a bunch of crap and I just delighted in helping Richard to marry in the temple to spite her. I didn't do it to spite her, but now he is here and so she, and Richard is still associating with her and his young wife is on that side sealed to him in the temple! It is kind of a mistake as I see it now. As even Richard acts like he is sorry he did it and is now looking at me as though I should not have tried to talk him into doing it when he was old and worried about his soul and his life of sin and resisting church doctrine.
GERRY: Quite a dilemma. I am sure you will get it sorted out eventually. I just hope the young wife left here doesn't decide just to sneak someone in so as to keep the temple marriage intact. So all the financial arrangements Richard made for her that would favor her not marrying again would not be rendered null and void.
HOMER. I hope Richard and I don't come to blows over it. I hope to get my temper under better control than that. I never expected church doctrine to be even harder to explain and justify on this side than on that side. So that is what I am thinking about. But hope to visit you again and will bring Howard when he gets better. I did not believe in mediums either, but can't resist coming and having a conversation with a relative who does not lose her temper every five minutes either.

Woman who tries to sober up old drunks unravels after they watch Crazy Heart

Doc and I keep making these movies and this one is particularly significant as it applies to the number 1 problem in our HUD housing complexes as well as among our criminal population, alcoholism with I am sure drug addiction keeping up and food and cigarette addictions following close behind.
Yesterday we had a HUD housing safety meeting with a police officer talking to us about how to handle these issues. I can't say that I have ever dealt with a big disturbance here that did not involve drinking or some other high behavior achieved by drugs. Yesterday the woman police officer revealed the sadness all law enforcement experienced yesterday when a young officer married with two small children was gunned down and killed by a burglary suspect undoubtedly looking to support his habit. He was a native of Tucson who had been in and out of jail, the most recent arrest for driving under the influence. Hated cops I suppose, why he chose to kill one and will undoubtedly spend the rest of his life in jail or even get the death sentence since no society looks kindly on cop killing.
Sigh. It was hard to be very light hearted in the wake of this sad death, but this video is an unraveling of a sort that I am sure is experienced across the land with usually one of the couple trying to sober up the other. My sister Ann posted in her blog a picture of a beautiful young woman who grew up in my hometown whose fights with her alcoholic husband became legendary. Her father did not drink and she could not stand drinking. They fought and fought until finally they had to separate to keep murder from happening. You can see from Ann's blog KanyonlandKing that she was packing. (carrying a gun) She is now 98 and her ex-husband is long since dead from his alcoholism. Thanks to her efforts I am sure none of her 3 sons are alcoholics. Tragically her one beautiful daughter was killed in a car wreck.
I have one son, my oldest, who is still a drinker, but my second son Raymond has fought the demons of alcoholism for years, and is now seeing the good results with people taking him serious as someone responsible to work with. What happens to old drunks is that they start to falter and fail and become unreliable, if not long before. My youngest son got a late start drinking in the navy and acted like he could still control it, not it control him, but I am always nervous when any of my kids drink. There are too many alcoholics on the King side for it to seem at all safe to me which is why I elected never to drink enough even to get drunk. I hated the taste of all alcohol, so eventually gave it up entirely and would not drink a drop. However food addiction took hold that I still struggle with today, no easy addiction to subdue either, but it does not lead to the crimes that alcohol and drug addiction do. The crime is just in undergoing an alteration of the body that is always painful. The bigger you get the worse it is. That addiction is also epidemic among the old and disabled. We are truly a dreadfully addicted society, and we are still so far from figuring out how to get to these addicts who may go on drinking and destroying themselves in great numbers for years. Actually dying drunk as claimed in these videos.

Crazy Heart the movie falls short

My son Raymond in the great header by Connie above playing "The Bohemian Cowboy" got excited about this movie, Crazy Heart, and I can see why he did. In the end the alcoholic western singer decides he has to sober up and goes to AA. I think Jeff Bridges is a very natural actor who was certainly able to display all the nuances of a country western singer drinking. What I didn't think he got well was a country western singing star singing. There just weren't any outstanding songs in this movie and Jeff Bridges doing an outstanding job of singing them.
Any talented star even if he drinks doesn't get far if he cannot deliver a great singing performance. And I have been moved by many country western performers, a number of whom had a drinking problem, possibly for years, before they were able to subdue the monster.
So for me this movie was just average. What I am getting excited about is the possibility of Raymond getting involved in the movie business, first up, it looks like with some of his scripts. He is scheduled to go to Austin this coming week where the movie he is working on is going to be made. Right now he is working on a script written by the director. He is too excited and nervous to blog so you will have to wait on him. Maybe after things actually start to happen he will settle down enough to let us know via his blog Cowboys and Bohemians.
Raymond actually has not done hardly any of his projects for many years while drinking. As he has pointed out, you can't teach high school theater and drink on a regular basis. Drinking is the ghost of past times that haunts him. He is always working to make sure that this ghost won't show up at the wrong time and scare off opportunity.
So what I think he is going to be able to do eventually is make a great western movie involving singing that will not disappoint in the song department. He has written a lot of great songs and he has been working on his performing skills. But what he should never forget which Jeff Bridges and company lost sight of is that to be memorable a movie about an alcoholic singer needs to be about more than drinking. I am so tired of seeing all the signs of alcohol abuse. Jeff Bridges portray those well as I said, but that was not what I hoped to see in this movie. I hope to see songs performed that I would remember, that I would take with me as I have taken many of the songs to heart that drinking singers have performed with haunting effect, despite drinking. To name a few, Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings.
Raymond's own father mesmerized a drinking party crowd quite a few times in his day while drinking, but I would always hope he would get started singing soon enough that he did not get too drunk before he had worked the crowd up with a great night of singing. I can still remember him with his haunting voice doing just that. I knew that that was all we were going to get from him, take it or leave it, that he was probably years from quitting drinking. He did not in fact quit drinking as a younger man until after we were divorced and he was married to his high school sweetheart who managed to get him to church every Sunday for years. But he mostly stopped singing except with the choir and I don't think he ever became a regular member of that.
Years later, after he gone on another nearly ten year spree of drinking, he was finally able to sing sober with his son Raymond. But he was too old by then to make a run for it. The youthful energy was gone that propelled him when I was married to him.
Now it was his son Raymond who had that energy not him, who has still got it in his early fifties, by virtue of struggling so hard to keep drinking out of his performing.
A man can do so much more with his opportunities if he does not drink. How sadly I can say that after I once more go to collect my things from the apartment of a guy who had all the talent in the world and has squandered it with years of heavy drinking. Doc was watching this movie with me, revealing that he had gotten drunk the night before with Navaho Dave. He hadn't sobered up yet, and after the movie was over, very drunk, he wanted to make a video. I just couldn't stand to perform with him that drunk, so I blew up and left. A little while later he called and told me to get down there or he was going to call Kim. Oh he had gotten drunk and drunker with Kim a few nights before that and told me with glee that he had gotten up to answer the door naked 'because he thought it was me' and gush goo it was Kim. I said, oh, well, you have been trying so hard to get that to happen, you answering the door naked to some other woman besides me. I take no notice of it knowing he is helpless in that department.
I told him I was not coming down at his command so go ahead and call Kim. Whatever.
But my thoughts have also been straying very far from him during the many evenings I spend alone, for if he is not getting very drunk, he has to go to bed about 6 or 7 he is so pleasantly sloshed after sipping all day he can't stay awake any longer.
I am usually very busy as I was night before last in preparation for writing about my cousin Howard's passing.
The great thing about both Howard and Homer in their years of being Mormon Bishops is that they were always totally sober. You can count on active Mormons not to drink. I know that they accomplished a lot of good in their service to others in the capacity of bishop.
So they were both powerful men which is why their passing was an event. They were both god fearing men who were 'going home.' I could imagine the great solemn music playing and the feeling of joy in welcoming home two brothers dying within several months of each other, two years apart in age, who were such controlled disciplined men. There was a heaven for them waiting there I am satisfied, their reward for a long life well lived.
I was just sorry that they were not able to intervene more in the lives of their alcoholic relatives who caused so much pain to their families and themselves. But I was aware that first of all they needed to save themselves. They needed to do whatever was necessary to keep from becoming alcoholics. My Aunt Neta had the right idea. She so did not want her sons to follow in the same footsteps as her drinking brothers had done who had such tragic endings to their lives.
My own father did not go gently into the night even though he cut his drinking way back. Still he would go on one heck of a destructive binge every once in a while and that is what helped kill him. He caused a wreck that could have killed 3 young men by getting drunk and crossing the yellow line and hitting their car head on. It was all his fault. He was probably going to be quite severely punished when he went to court, but he died at 64 just before that happened. He beat his sentence by dying of a heart attack first, but during the wreck his chest had nearly been impaled on the steering wheel shaft of his almost new Cadillac de Ville. He wrecked that beautiful car totally! And I am sure paved the way to a fatal heart attack a few months later. We were just thankful to lay him in his grave without him having killed those guys.
When a good man dies the angels play their harps in their honor when they come home. I still feel that my father labors in the beyond to recover from his life of drinking. If only more young men pictured what was going to happen with a drinking life, perhaps there would be less old alcoholics so addicted it remains beyond their strength to quit for years.

Upon hearing my cousin Howard died

The blog I wrote yesterday was probably in preparation for calling and finding out that my cousin Howard died. He would be 92 this morning and he had worked to the age of 90! Sounds like our Grandfather King who at 87 was working in the fields clearing brush and got burned by a fire he set. Howard also met with an accident while at work that ended his life 9 months later. His wife Ada said that he tried to lift a lounge, fell, and broke his back. Up to then his health had been fantastic so I was shocked to call him and find him sounding so ill and almost out of it. I called when his brother Homer died to find out how he was. He said he was not good. Not long after his kids came home to see him, he was hospitalized as his kidneys failed, and still in pain, he died.
When I was 13 I went to live in his mother's home for two years, so I heard a great deal about Howard and Homer while I was there who were both in the service still fighting in World War II Howard was a major in Europe and Homer was a dentist in the navy. Homer's wife came to visit a month while I was there and Aunt Neta and I had so much fun with her baby boy, my Aunt Neta's first grandchild! Howard's wife, Ada, who was a beautiful girl and at the time a stewardess on an airline service, used to come home from Salt Lake periodically. Ada was the one who told me Howard had died and she was still living in their home at the age of 90! So she was a very hardy soul, too. She sounded just as gracious and charming as she always did, and said that after 9 hectic months nursing Howard until his death, she was enjoying relaxing in their home, and there she was going to stay! She told me their oldest son, David, a lawyer, came and stayed with her the whole time toward the end and helped her take care of business. Another son, Pauli, came from Virginia I think it is with his wife and some of his children, for the funeral. He played the organ for the services. Their third and last child, Julie, an architect, came from France where she lives, but had gone back because she was designing their new home, about to be finished. She also said that she was the president of the relief society in the Mormon community in Paris I think it is where they live.
The photo of the dancers is David, the oldest son also a lawyer, when they were touring the world. This fairy tale romance ended in divorce, breaking David's heart and his bank account according to his mother. She fell in love with another man, but what a dramatic couple they were here!


I was thinking for hours yesterday about this family as I ran into quite a lot of upset there and decided to leave after two years and go down to Salt Lake. Aunt Neta was a home economics teacher, teaching sewing and cooking. She told me I had to make a suit and I balked at that, knowing that would probably be the worst looking suit ever sewed by a rank amateur. I knew she and my sister Margie would be more congenial as Margie didn't turn a hair when told she had to make a suit in Aunt Neta's sewing class if she were to stay there. Two years of sewing were required by my aunt to live in her home, as well as Mormon seminary, church every Sunday and mutual on Tuesday for young people. I was not used to being required to go to church and had always avoided sewing for fear it would somehow interfere with my writing. I figured I did enough work to make up for not sewing, for heaven's sakes, which would hurt me more than it would anyone, because my dad, also a champion of women sewing, said he would buy any material there was if his daughters would just sew their own clothes. So they bought velvet, satin, whatever their hearts desired while I was clad in hand me downs, because he did not want to buy any 'store bought' clothes! I just thought Aunt Neta was too bossy in these particulars and that the students in that high school were not book readers enough to offer me the challenges I needed while planning to attend the University of Utah.
Aunt Neta hardly spoke to me again my whole life when I said I was leaving, even though Margie came and they got along famously. She was just that way. So I was rather upset by how mad she got at my electing to go down to Salt Lake and live with my Wilson relatives. This move however proved to be the right one for me so I was prepared to do without my Aunt's blessing if she was going to withhold it from me.
I did in fact think that my aunt was not far from being mentally ill in some of her attitudes which got worse when she reached old age. I decided to stay with her one night when she was up in her late seventies regardless of the fact we had hardly talked for years. I had to take my youngest son Dan to Salt Lake to see a specialist when he was just a baby and asked her if I could spend the night at her apartment. The next morning she came out and accused me of making a mark on her leather coffee table that had obviously been there for years. I protested I had not even sat there with a drink in hand, but she kept on scolding me for ruining her coffee table! I thought to myself I am never speaking to her again and never did, even though it was obvious she was somewhat demented. Still she had not seemed to have forgotten she held a grudge against me.
As a result we were never close to her boys either as she did not seem to want them to associate with southern Utah relatives as there had been a bitter divorce from her husband, the boys' father. And she did not want them to associate with his relatives either.
My hope is that these sons will recognize the importance of getting back in touch with relatives. This often happens in Mormon families where some of the members of the family leave the church or are not as active as others. Church members then become their families. Since I was the daughter of one of the sons who rebelled against the church, good Mormon relatives stopped associating with our family. He was a drinker, too, which made good Mormons naturally want their sons to avoid such relatives.
I had gone to my aunt's home because of my dad's heavy drinking and the stress it had caused his family, so my aunt was definitely not happy with my dad. But I have never felt that complete abandonment of an alcoholic family member is always the best thing. One of my dad's other brothers who was also an alcoholic committed suicide and this was definitely not what I wanted my dad to do. So my sisters and I tried everything possible to reach him and did not give up, in fact, until he did start to shut his drinking down a great deal. I believe he would also have died had we not made such an effort, so I thought my aunts who would have nothing to do with their drinking brothers took the easy way out.
Even in later years if I ever called my cousin Howard he would immediately preach to me about becoming active in the Mormon church as he had become a Mormon bishop, and I would tell him that I did not think the church handled men like my dad, his uncle, well, and his problems which was alcoholism compounded by a homosexual problem. I told Howard right out that this was the problem I thought was driving my father to sure suicide if he did not get some understanding. I always tried to convey to my dad that homosexuality did not make him evil and he should not commit suicide because of it. Since I wasn't allowed to mention the subject to him, it was hard to get my message across but I believe I succeeded, as I tried to explain to Howard.
My dad did not take my leaving home a year early too badly since I was going to have to go away to school anyway since there was no high school in Boulder, nor did the bus go to Escalante as it did later where my three youngest sisters attended high school.
I was always happy that I could get this subject talked about to Howard since I did not succeed in getting it talked about to hardly anyone else, including my aunts. This is not a subject most Mormons can handle. However since Howard was so aggressive with me I felt I could come back at him. So I was always sorry that I did not get to talk to him more than I did. His wife Ada was very conventional and I thought she would be horrified at such talk.
But you know what, this is why I look forward to heaven, just because there was so much of a difficult nature that was not talked about. I know if my dad's soul is to progress he must have some kind of therapy, something that will convince him that he can talk about what was going on back then, even with the man who molested me. It was a terrible thing not to be able to talk about this because of what my dad had been doing with the molester that I absolutely could not bring up, since he would have gone clear crazy at the very mention of it. He would have acted like some mad dog, snarling and out of his mind. He did act that way if I even got close to the subject, so I had to let it go, but it was always in my craw.
I got so mad at him when after the divorce from my mother he would go around saying she had committed adultery. I thought to myself what in the world were you committing all those years partying with men? So I said to him, "Daddy, you have to be tempted by women to be virtuous for refraining from having affairs with them, you were not even attracted to women, you were one of the coldest men toward women I have ever known!" Well, that was enough to cause him to shut up about my mother committing adultery, because he knew I was about to lay some more observations on him, possibly about him and Bill Isabel the molester.
But this was about as far as I could go. I do believe that my dad had one of the worst hangups I have ever seen about just admitting the truth about what he was doing. So I am naturally hoping that he has gone to a place where he will get some therapy and be able to talk about his life and behavior here. As it was he tried to make like Houdini and try to convince you it never happened. It helped to have Sol in the family for a while who admitted quite freely he was a bisexual and how he came to marry. He did have trouble admitting he was a child molester though! I hope he gets some much needed therapy, too! I am sure he would not get it in this life, people were so prone to let a beautiful singer get away with anything!
I think Howard had a strong mind and needed big issues to challenge him. I am sure he will recover fast and will jump up and be ready to debate the issues. My male King relatives all had very analytical minds. It was the alcohol they drank that impeded their good thinking and their tempers. They were known for debating all the big issues of the day around the dinner table, shouting and disagreeing for all they were worth.
I picture them doing that on the other side and Howard among them, finding his place there after having to avoid them because of their drinking, so he would not fall into their alcoholic ways.
Howard was the first King grandson so was greatly loved by both his Grandmother and Grandfather King who took care of him while his mother went back to college and got a degree to teach school. They must have missed him a lot when his mother decided she would no longer bring him to visit his King relatives so as to keep him away from their bad influence. Her boys did grow up to be good Mormons, bishops both of them, but they completely missed associating with or getting to know any of their cousins, like me and my sisters. She virtually made herself their only relative they could associate with on either side, hers or their dad's due to their bitter divorce.
I had all these relatives I associated with on both my mother's and dad side as much as they would associate, and I thought I was the richer for it. Associating with my King cousins did not cause me to want to drink. I vowed I would never drink. I can talk to alcoholics without wanting to drink.
My aunt wanted boys to get a new family, good Mormons! So they did. I am sure she was convinced this was the only way to save them. But my dad being homosexual stopped me from doing that. And you know what before I left I became suspicious that my aunt was hiding a lesbian relationship with another school teacher. It just blew my mind, because she acted exactly like my dad did when it came to talking about it. She acted like if she never talked about it, nobody would ever suspect. She was a man hater. Her companion lived with us. I even wondered if my aunt had not completely severed her knowledge of her own personality from her mind, so that she had two personalities, the religious upright school teacher and the other. She would go down to Ogden and spend time in her apartment. This woman was not a Mormon, and in fact hated religion. She also smoked cigarettes in a long holder, wore pants suits, and cut her hair like a man's. She also had a deep voice.
And I thought oh, our society forces people to lie about what they do. To be such hypocrites because of their judgment that homosexuality is evil and they don't want their kids taught by lesbians. My aunt could have lost her job had anyone suspected this, even after she had it for years.
So this was another reason I felt I had a special bond to Howard and Homer, that perhaps our parents, a sister and a brother, both had developed a homosexual personality. I thought my Grandfather also hid his homosexuality quite successfully as a rancher who lived most of the year on the ranch with his men while my grandmother maintained another establishment 30 miles away so the kids could go to school in the winter. I also think this predisposed my dad to homosexuality and probably his sister, too, simply because they grew up around it, even though it was denied and hidden by the one parent. My Grandfather and my aunt never became addicted to alcohol but my dad did, compounding his problems.
I, of course, never breathed a word of any of these thoughts and suspicions to Howard or anyone else as this would have been way too much for him, but I figure he will have to face this in the hereafter if his mother is to receive help for what I thought was a deepening mental illness. If he wants his mother to get well he is going to have to get strong enough to face the truth whatever it is, and I think I might have helped him toward that just by insisting on talking to him about my dad.
My poor aunt actually I think just kind of withdrew into herself and both boys moved far away so she rarely saw them again. She would go and stay with each of them a few days, but of course they did not see her often, since they both lived so far away. Her sons were the joys of her life but I am sure she would have willingly removed herself from their lives if she decided she was 'evil' or not good enough for them to associate with either. She never came down to see us either, so she lived a very isolated life, and that is when I thought she started to grow increasingly mentally ill. My dad never got that bad. As we never left him alone for long. I always thought he would grow increasingly more crazy if we did not talk to him often.
I am eager to receive messages from the other world to see if some of this is going to get talked about. For quite a long time I would get the message that my aunt was still very mental dreading when her boys would die and might find out more about her. That she was not going to be able to get better until she met up with them and some of this got talked about. Her other son Homer died not too long before Howard did, so they are both there. I have asked my sister LaRae to keep bringing me messages as to how they are progressing with her as well as my dad's progress.

I was left unsatisfied so decided I had to write another blog entry

I went down and laundered the bathmat for Doc who was trying to clean up his stopped up and overflowing bathroom sink mess, but it has been partially stopped up for months, and now it is finally flowing freely. I came home to roast some ribs and vegetables while he goes to the store. Such is our life.
What I had in mind was nothing less than talking about how the existence of God can be proved as well as the reality of Christ. I began to consult my creator every day to see what direction would be best to take that day, what job needed to be done in this world that I might be able to do and so on. I always thought of God as what I have come to think of as universal consciousness of wisdom that has been gathered through the ages and can manifest at times when it is needed in a sense of being. Christ I think was a real person who can intervene in our lives just like many angels can by virtue of having great power due to his name being bandied about down through the centuries of Christian belief, sometimes not for good as in the harsh inquisitions and witch burnings of yesteryear. I am sure the real Christ suffered great pain when evil was done in his name. We have to be able to judge whether an action is good or bad and must certainly question it if it is harsh and could be said to be of a violent nature.
I do not think this goes against most people's sense of reality as many would agree that some great human beings seem to collect more wisdom and ability to do great and noble deeds as well as think very profound thoughts. And these people add to our knowledge of what man can accomplish.
As far a spirit inhabiting and leaving our bodies at death, I think this belief has been manifested in many cultures down through the ages as well as the spirit of skepticism that scorned such beliefs as unrealistic and wishful thinking. I have tried to influence some skeptics that were not willing to take one step toward 'belief' that was needed in order to entertain this idea. They just wouldn't do it.
Well, what happens is that human beings continue to be born and die and that in its self seems some kind of miracle. I feel very much alive and have always balked at the idea that with death I would just cease completely to be. How could I suddenly be so alive as in birth and then just as suddenly be totally dead?
I have deduced that this is just not a logical happening and that there has to be some things going on that we don't exactly see. It seems logical that we would need a place to go and think about what had just transpired in this life we lived as there seems to be so many loose ends and questions still to be answered, so the logical thing to me would be to have a spirit residing within which would once freed of the body could expand into some other form more like air.
You know for years I had the most resentment of my body which I thought was so slow in getting places especially. We would get in the car and ride for miles and miles to get some little place, and I would think why do bodies have to go so slow, when there must be some way, if by thought process to get to that place in the twinkling of an eye. I started reading about teleporting which was that very thing, leaving the body and transporting to another place in spirit form, much faster even than a plane could go, almost in an instant. So teleporting was something that some people seemed to be able to do. Uri Geller I remember wrote quite a lot about teleporting and claimed to be able to do it. I thought ah, that is what I am looking for. A way to get there fast.
Most of the mediums I have read talk about the spirits being able to travel as fast as their thoughts. I also read mention of the spirit possibly existing in our minds, memories, of that person which kept the people alive, and so am thinking that heaven might be a work of our own imaginations, and the imaginations of centuries of human beings that could exist as kind of a collaboration of what they thought was needed and had created in their own minds.
For I am sure that other people have thought before me that we need to gather after death and talk about what happened on earth, what people did, mistakes that were made, and see if some conclusions could be drawn about what to do better in another life. The last medium I read said that in her experience spirits stay in the realm of 'heaven' until all who related to them on earth have come to see them and reunite, and then after that they might seek a piggy back ride back into life via a new baby maybe even born to one of their own descendants. This baby might come out acting a lot like great grandpa which would not be uncommon.
It might be that the 'divine' component of every child is a spirit entity, so that the baby does not quicken to life until this spirit entity is in place and ready for the ride, that this has been done since man came into being so it all goes smoothly and seems very natural. Then when the life of the body can no longer be sustained the spirit is ready to depart until another journey back to earth is made. Which in some cases might be a very long time. Some spirits might have jobs to do that keep them busy in 'spirit' realms and don't think of reincarnating as part of their plan.
We all know that man will only sustain so much pain until the body dies. The body is not designed to endure eternal pain. It dies, and I think it would be logical for the spirit to want this release eventually when the body had become useless in some part and was simply too much trouble or impossible to keep going.
Now the spirit could in other realms start to think that something was needed and that would be when another journey back to earth might be planned, hazardous to be sure but worth the risk in order to learn something new, try something very difficult and so on.
I know as a child I would think oh what a difficult life I have but I would always feel that I had picked this life, this mission, for a reason. I planned to come down and try to do something about a problem. I know that alcoholism has plagued man for centuries, and since I seemed to have conquered the need to drink myself, I think that I would come back down among drinkers to keep trying to figure out what could be done to help these poor souls who would get addicted and then spend their lives causing themselves and the other people in their lives misery and pain. People have been doing this for centuries and we still don't seem to have made a lot of headway in keeping people from getting addicted to it. So it looks like man learns slowly. And we are still an experiment. We are still trying to find out what traits we need to develop so that some of us won't become addicted to the same old thing alcohol. Also drugs that come from the poppies and such have existed for centuries and enslaved people, so we are still still trying to figure out how to keep numbers in our society from becoming addicted to those.
I know there are a lot of alcoholics in my family who have passed, so I expect to go hear what they have concluded from their struggles with alcohol addiction. My mother came from a family that had very few alcoholics in it, but were rather foodoholics and developed the diseases those people are pray to which is what my problem is.
I often feel as comfortable talking to spirits as I do to living people because naturally after they have thought everything over that happened they are apt to be easier to reason with. I am also preparing to leave my body and live in the spirit form for a while, so I am taking lessons in how to do it and be comfortable. I see people in here every day dying and getting ready to leave. Yet my spirit still seems as strong in my aging body as it ever was, seeming to be made of more durable material than my knees which are getting very stiff. I can write and think with such energy the young have trouble keeping up with me, an energy I expect to have until departure by not letting depressing thoughts enter my head, but instead looking about for my connections.
Doc gets very depressed with his philosophy of life. He does not visualize his parents in the spirit world thinking about his alcoholism. Or his brother who died young trying to get some message through to him that there is more to life than he thinks. My imagination sustains me and keeps me thinking about something that will uplift me. Doc claims he heard all this talk in his church for many years and he is highly allergic to it. I think he was probably turning a deaf ear to it when very young. He loved music and was probably thinking he would go hang out with the jazz musicians and what this involved was drinking with them. So pretty soon he was inhabiting these places of music in St. Louis and was developing a terrible addiction to alcohol.
The tightly knit Lutheran community where he was raised hardly even recognized a big alcohol problem rearing its head for one of their brightest and most talented. Doc learned to play the piano and they were all suspicious of the arts, so they could only see a business career for him in the future. Had he been Jewish they would probably have recognized he had a great talent for show biz. He was fascinated with it, was a natural born actor, was good looking, could sing, but no he was not okayed to head in that direction by his Lutheran family. They acted like the Arts did not even exist. Well, Mormons are a lot like that in that they don't visualize a playwright's career or one on Broadway for any of their young women. They will take care of all their needs right there in Mormon Utah within the bosom of the church.
So Doc's community was probably a throwback to old Lutheran times in Germany where many of them had migrated from fairly recently. He got caught in a time warp, and i had chosen to come down among the Mormons who were stifling all the young intellectuals born to them like me in Mormon Utah where reading too many books was looked on with suspicion.
I was going to have a tough time being an intellectual with a deep interest in theater which I thought that I was most suited to be, and so was Doc. I could not have found anyone more congenial to my interests with a great sense of humor always willing to laugh at himself as well as at others. But alas, snared very young in alcoholism.
Often you do not persuade any alcoholic to quit. You just do what you can and when you can't stand what it is doing to them anymore you move on, if they don't die first. Doc's alcoholism fits him like an old glove. He is very comfortable with it. But I am always aware of what he is giving up, of his sanity and mind power. Because my mother's brothers did not drink, so I always had them to compare with the drinkers, so did not lose sight of what was possible for a sober man to accomplish.
My mother finally got to a man who did not drink who had been able to manage a career singing for quite a long time. But alas, he had been molested by his music teacher and in adulthood he repeated the pattern. He just could not leave children alone. His addiction had ruined his career. It also ruined his relationship with all of us and finally with my mother who was forced to see through his denials and recognize that he was a criminal even though he never drank at all. She just could not believe that there could be anything seriously wrong with a man who did not drink. There were some problems like this in her family that probably came about the same way through early influence as children.
So one of my other issues also became child molestation and influence which results in a splitting of the sexual nature, allowing homosexuality to become the primary one. And of course homosexuality is not accepted as the norm in our society probably because it isn't the norm and may be largely brought about through those who prey on the young. For years the idea that gays are born that way has stopped our society from recognizing that many gays may be developed through molestation after birth. Gays do not like to think this could be the case, because it makes life even more difficult for those who are victimized in the beginning. I think my dad was probably one of those. I doubt he was born gay as I know some seem to be. I think he was living in a society where molestation and introducing sexual activities among males, especially those who tampered with alcohol was epidemic. I thought it was epidemic when I was young, as something of this sort was happening to all my male cousins who tampered with alcohol.
Mormons were uncomfortable with the very term homosexual and tried to ignore it for the most part. With polygamy they tended to go the other way, many of the men, who the church had conveniently accommodated with polygamy, and Mormons were never willing to admit that the existence of the lost boys who did not get the wives the more powerful men married gave rise to more homosexuality. The more intellectual of their progeny like me would point out such stuff and risked their very lives to do so. I was incarcerated trying to surface some of this stuff in that society, so what does that tell you?
I noted that at the University professors could be gay but were forced to hide it completely. Mormons would get them fired if they came out anywhere. Marriage of course was the safest way for a bisexual man to go. Mormons tended not to notice if a man was gay as long as a wife didn't. Wives of bisexuals tended to be more accepting than normal because their ancestors had been more accepting of polygamy than normal.
Big problems in Utah so I figured I decided that is where I needed to be born, so I was. I spent my early years trying to get Utah more up to snuff instead of reverting back to some dark age. Utah is the only state in the union in which a church is so dominating, and that has had some bad results in that some of the most illogical ideas in Mormonism are still accepted because Mormons won't accept change. There are too many of them in Utah. They don't have to. So they don't.
I finally had to move out to a more free state like Arizona with much of the same terrain where I grew up, the Colorado river plateau country. But I continue to criticize from afar. I earned my right to criticize from living there as many years as I did. I just couldn't imagine myself anywhere else. That was home.
Leaving home is another big adjustment. Going into exile and all that that entails. I was driven out of Utah by people who refuse to change, but it is not personal, it just happens because there are too many people still thinking alike. I could see it was going to take a very long time for Utah to become less of a Mormon state. Brigham Young's vision about having a Mormon state was actually the goal, and people who did not go along were invited to move on. Conform or get out!
He never did believe that might not be a good thing but what do you expect from a man who married 26 women and probably did not even know all his own kids. The story goes he asked one young man who his father was and he said, "You, sir!"

Decided to treat myself to the movies!

I saw that "Robin Hood" with Russell Crowe was playing over to the Arizona Center, so needing the walk, I made my way over there to see whether Ridley Scott, the director of "Gladiator" came anywhere close to that accomplishment in this one. I have to say it was very expensively made. The bow and arrow work was good. I was convinced they can kill. Russell Crowe looks very good on a horse. And Max von Sydow continues to be an amazing actor even when playing a guy blind and near dead. Now Kate Blanchett although she continued to be her sensible intelligent self as Maid Marion I am not sure something more was not needed in her part just to jazz things up somehow, touch the soul, bring some deeper excitement into this obviously very expensive film. The simple touch. These guys spend millions on these huge panoramas of action and then the movie doesn't really come alive even after all that. I am still puzzled as to why it didn't with so much going for it.
You know they just have to hope that after they have filmed all the parts well they will somehow add up to a satisfying whole but I was just left a little cold. Can't quite figure out what was missing. Oh, it held my interest. Wasn't even boring. It just didn't come up to my idea of a great movie.
I guess it was the approach to the love story that seemed off, needlessly complicated. I have never heard anything about another guy coming to play Maid Marion's husband who had really died eventually becoming Robin Hood. Where did that come from? I guess I am just not up on my Robin Hood myth. I thought did they just make that up or did they get it from the story. Was there really a Robin Hood? Every movie Robin Hood I have seen has been so vastly different from the other ones you do tend to think these script writers get carried away inventing stuff that never happened and very likely could never have happened. I idly looked at the names of the three script writers who crafted this rather disjointed story. Same thing with "Alice in Wonderland" in which the script writers seemed to take a lot of liberties with the original story, with the idea of improving on it I suppose, making it more acceptable to some mythical movie goers who like that sort of thing.
We are taken along for the ride and after it is over we are scratching our heads and wondering just what happened here? It was that sort of story. I wonder when a Ridley Scott is making this sort of movie if he knows at any given time where he is going with this story and whether he has gotten there. Maybe he is just hoping.
Which is why I don't go to the movies very often! I am not changed by them as I once thought I was. Ridley Scott has kind of disappointed me before. Oh well, Russell Crowe is a good actor to have in your movie if it does not quite end up with true greatness. He is an actor who can always convince if he has anything at all to work with.

Catching up with family and friends here and in the hereafter

I had a new setting for a photo this morning, down stairs on the second floor, standing by a lovely cupboard. I met up with Doc down there looking for maintenance to come to his apartment to fix a problem with his plumbing pronto! The photo turned out well and I soon joined him for sunrise in Yosemite which was very lovely (on cable). We read the paper after which I said I would leave him to his misery and to call me when it was fixed. He did not want me to stay long enough to use his bathroom of uncertainty, so this sent me home fairly fast.
I talked for quite a long time last night with my son Raymond. He got his computer fixed but had not resumed blogging so I did not know what was the matter. He said he was still betwixt and between possibly going back to Austin in a week, so as long as he didn't know his future completely he could not blog. I don't have that problem. I pretty well know my future, as long as I reside here on the earth that is. The wind was a fright yesterday in Phoenix. I hardly dare go outside for fear it would blow me over. It was practically at tornado force. We have had some very strong winds this spring. I don't know if that means the end of the world or what but it could send an unsteady old lady from end to end and that might be the end of her world!
Last night I received a visit from my sister LaRae (passed) accompanied by Jewel (in the photo at Grand Canyon) who was my sister Ann's best friends. She died a year ago but I am sure was very busy reuniting with her husband, the father of her four living children and one passed on. Her husband had died from trying to withdraw too fast from a drug addiction. It was an unexpected death since he was just starting to make big money as a dentist. Instead he was gone and she had to scramble around to make a living for her and the four children. Jewel contracted a fairly rare disease herself (Raynaud's) that tended to run in her mother's family. She was unfortunate enough to get it and last year at the age of 70 I believe she was unable to fight it any more, but what a warrior she was. She used to hop up and down the trail into the Grand Canyon like it was nothing. Like her father before her, she was a great hiker. She was always so enthusiastic and animated, I used to love to talk to her.
Well, last night she and my sister LaRae were talking about how they could see everyone on earth from this grid and their pattern of brain activity. She said some were very animated while some people's brains hardly stirred all day long. Well, I knew that.

Then a little later some information started to come in saying that the great numbers of abortions in this world has altered patterns in the hereafter as everyone is saved, including all these children, and so they must be looked after. It also said that people do not want to reincarnate to families where there is danger they will be aborted and just have to come right back. So this has led to something like empty womb syndrome. After so many abortions what with people not wanting to come to that womb, something that is called barren womb syndrome develops and the woman can no longer get pregnant. They forfeit their opportunity to be parents.
I suppose this information came in and caught my attention from my having blogged about legalized abortion some yesterday. My sister LaRae said of course she was very much involved in this work in expiation from having supported pro choice so strongly as well as having an abortion. Jewel lost a child who had gotten brain damaged at birth from too much drugs. They tried to stop the baby from coming because the doctor was not there and ended up doing severe damage to it. The child was severely retarded but lived for three years. It was a tragic happening and Jewel never forgot what could happen if people especially babies got over medicated.
I am sure she had been reconnecting to this child who could only have been healed from divine intervention, so I was very curious about that. There seemed to have been a good outcome after the baby went to the hereafter and could be treated there with very advanced techniques. What happened was that the soft spot closed so the brain could not expand as it was growing. So that was what caused the retardation. I am sure they must have known that the soft spot was closing but did not know what to do about it. The little boy went to be with his father who I thought had probably recovered from his fast death and was prepared to look after him. He came home from lunch, laid down to take a little nap, and when Jewel went in to call him to dinner, his heart had stopped due to withdrawal from valium. I know that withdrawal can be very dangerous as Raymond tried to come off OxyContin without help, and he ended up in the hospital emergency.
This visit led to one from Pierre (a former companion of mine who passed) who was coming to talk about his green card status as an immigrant from Canada. He said he was always afraid that he would do something to get arrested and deported back to Canada where he did not want to go. I also talked to my sister Linda whose boyfriend of several years was from Mexico with a green card status. He does not speak English well either, nor does his brother apparently, who got drunk and was picked up in Tucson where he had gone to visit. His documentation was thought to be fake, so he did not get out for 3 days.
Now here is a common problem, illegals who may also be alcoholics or drug addicts. We have always thought Linda's Mexican boyfriend was her best to date because he was not a mean drunk and he had a great sense of humor. But she said she finally had to leave him because he was a gambler, too, and not good for her addiction, and he was very hard to get money out of for his share of the house payment. When she developed a medical problem and could no longer work, she could not afford him any more. The house went into foreclosure, and she got him to look after her 2 dogs that she left living under the house and moved to San Francisco to get help from her daughter. The house has been up for auction several times but has not sold yet, so now Leo says the dogs own the house. He goes by and feeds them and sometimes sleeps there if it is not too hot. He says an illegal from Mexico can live under a tree, they can hang anywhere.
He did not pay the utility bills so there is no electricity. But the dogs don't care. They still love their house.
Leo still has a job and can hang on to it because he has a green card even though he like his brother might get picked up for drunk driving or something. He can produce his green card and will go free, even though he might be breaking the law. As long as he has started his documentation he is not going to be deported. So that is another illegal story.
We will always love Leo because he made Linda happy even if he was not too responsible. He was always making jokes. One of the funny things he said was that Linda liked to scream at people but she did not want to be screamed. We laughed and laughed at that. He was very shrewd in his assessments of Linda.
Pierre, my French Canadian boyfriend was younger than I was too, very good looking, and he spoke English so well you could not even detect an accent! Contrary to his sister who had not learned English even though she had been in this country longer than he had. Her husband who started his own construction company learned English as did Pierre who worked for him. But Pierre told me that a bunch of his Canadian cousins came down here and started taking advantage of our bankruptcy laws. They would start a construction company, run up a bunch of bills and then file bankruptcy and not pay. Then they would go somewhere else and start up another company under another cousin's name. I was indignant and said why you cousins were a bunch of crooks. Pierre ran up his credit cards the same way. I remember once he took $1500 dollars just because they offered it to him! I said you know you are going to run out of money and are going to quit paying on these cards (that was his plan). He blamed this plan on to his ex-American born wife, but it sounded like his cousins' plan, too. He did stop paying on his credit cards and the company was shocked and indignant and hounded him day and night and were going to take him to court. Before he could be taken there, he died. What a sad story.
How sad to end his last days being hounded day and night by his creditors. That's not fun. Which is one reason I have never bought anything on credit. My health was not good, so I figured that was not a good idea.
Doc is more conscientious. He has credit cards, but always pays his payments which are within his social security means, he is so frugal. But he does plan on dying before his big toys are paid for. He figures they cannot take them then, and he can will them to someone else and the company will be left holding the bag. I think that is crooked, too, but they don't realize Doc is a bad alcoholic when they give him all that credit, so he figures they will deserve it!
I save up and pay cash for bigger toys. That is the way my dad did it. He would not even buy a car on credit. He paid cash for it. Doc could have paid cash for his toys or paid them off very fast, but he stretched it out, so I think that is intent to crook. What do you think?

More Arizona border stories

I read an opinion today in the Arizona Republic written by a partner in the Babacomari Ranch property on the border that I think could well represent how a lot of us feel. Here it is:
"As a fourth-generation Arizonan living out of state I;m proud to see Arizona take a stand on immigration. I'm married to a Cuban-American and have three bilingual boys who celebrate their diverse background and Arizona heritage.
We have been staunch supporters of cross-border trade and immigration from Mexico for well over 100 years! What folks fail to realize is that rule of law matters and the days of open borders before 9/11 must end.
Our ranch in southern Arizona has been overrun with both illegal immigrants and drug runners since 2001. We found a dead drug spotter a half-mile from our head quarters in 2009. The spotter had very sophisticated equipment.
We must drastically expand our guest-worker programs and continue to treat our neighbors to the south with both dignity and respect. However, common sense dictates that the border must be secured.
The Arizona people I have known and loved have always possessed a great deal of common sense. We are a state of rugged individuals and entrepreneurial spirit that takes action when others continue to do nothing but talk about what to do.
Keep the pressure on the federal government to do its job. We all know what this political posturing is really about: a never-ending drug war and open borders.
--Matt Brody, Sonoita"

I too have deep ties in my family to the Mexican people with a grandson with Spanish and Indian blood from his mother's side as well as all the origins of the 'white' side from my son. My daughter from 20 years of living in a Mexican neighborhood is bilingual with many Mexican friends. She has worked with La Leche for many years, Breast Feeding for Hispanic Mothers, and hopes to make that her nursing specialty in the years to come. She had deep concerns about the upset the new Arizona law might bring to her friends. We have differed in our political views, but she focused on school while I focused on the neighborhood which was not safe for anybody's children. I would say that in all the older Mexican neighborhoods where there is cheap housing as well as possible relatives to help, illegals have been flooding in with violence as a result. These neighborhoods have been hit just as hard as the border properties with people who are trying to be a part of the drug trade, and they carry guns!
When you can pinpoint why there continues to be so much gun violence in these neighborhoods and more in recent years, then you know that life for them is not good either. And it is not going to change until the numbers of illegals and drug traffickers can be reduced.
I am afraid that most of the people who are so concerned about racial profiling and so on have not had to dodge bullets in recent years because of the influx. I see our Hispanic citizens as experiencing more relief than upset if our borders are brought under more control. Until they are, law breakers suspected of being illegals should be jailed with eventual deportation in mind in my opinion. I have read that in Yuma where illegals are being jailed, immigration in that sector has been considerably reduced. Jailing them for longer periods of time has worked. I am sure most have not considered that the criminal element in Mexico is bound to head north if there is more money to be made. I doubt if any Mexican president has missed them.
I stated that my reaction to Spanish becoming our second language in such a resounding way was tied to my knowledge of the flow of illegals that it took to require government agencies to take the step of printing everything in Spanish as well as English.
Until people can enter our country in a way that is less tied to the idea of illegal invasion, the Spanish language will continue to be greeted with unease by many. When is the violence going to end, many ask themselves. The defiance of the law. The creation of a Mex-Arizona. Without any of the advantages.
I can tell you many stories of violence and criminality I saw and heard on the west side, many of my neighbors involved with illegals helping them, sometimes being taken advantage of, and sometimes being shot by them.
I am for taking a much more vigorous approach to illegal drugs with the idea that their transport, sale, and consequent addictions can be reduced! Just as I think a more vigorous approach to alcohol addiction which is legal could be implemented. If you make it too easy for the drug traffickers to keep big shipments of drugs flowing north and guns flowing south, you are losing the war right there. Most law enforcement people can tell you what is needed, they have been trying to tell us all along if those who make the laws would just listen!
I would feel so frustrated on the west side because nobody seemed to care how much violence was going on in the those neighborhoods. And because I was an abortion protester and most of the big newspapers were liberal and pro choice, they would not print my letters.
I can't understand a democratic party that is supposed to pay particular attention to minority rights going pro choice completely ignoring the rights of the fetus to have a safe passage way from conception to birth. Now that is cruel! And to me not logical. As if a fetus could not feel pain when attacked just because the one performing the abortion doesn't want to think so.
So as far as I am concerned the democratic party is not immune to falling into a trap of bad thinking. For me, President Bush let everyone down when he allowed his emotions to overcome common sense when it came to starting the Iraq war. What, bombing the place to smithereens to bring a democratic way of life to these poor people? After the bombs, they would shake the hands of their 'liberators' so went President Bush's logic. Well, we are still trying to stop all the individual bombing attacks and get that country settled down so we dare leave it after an extremely expensive war caused by a President who did not think through what he was doing.
But the democratic party now in power has still yet to see some of the gigantic errors of their thinking engendered by the sudden fait accompli of legalized abortion. Now according to them, we can't get along without it. Well, it would be extremely hard after getting everyone used to making use of the abortion clinic in a bind. Well, then that caused them to have to pronounce God is dead, at least should be in government. We have to get religion out of state, its our worst enemy to logic. So what does that say to the Mormons and the Catholics whose religion is entwined in everything they do.
What we have now is the superior liberal who implies that anyone who doesn't agree with him or her is stupid. I am a big book reader but I became a stupid pro life believer in comparison to the most ignorant liberal who was pro choice. Because intelligence it is implied is the ability to see that pro choice is necessary.
I don't object to religion, I object to the illogical in religion such as in the Mormon religion where it is claimed that nobody on this earth will be able to enter heaven without being baptized a Mormon! This belief was preached even back when Mormons were polygamists. It would take a real act of God to take this one off the books. When religions need to change they can't. Mormons would still be polygamists if the US government had not said they could not be a state or even a legal territory and practice polygamy!
I am against the illogical thinking tied to legalized abortion as well. The democrats have championed the killing necessary for an abortion showing they can be mighty heartless when they think they are right just like a bunch of other people who think they are right when they might be wrong. They have been perfectly willing to try to do away with any religious belief that opposes legalized abortion.
I think that a belief in a higher power is one of the strongest means there is to conquer addiction, but the democrats have killed a belief in a higher power along with the right to life from conception, they don't care if this has proved to be one of the most successful therapies for alcoholics and drug addicts there is, Alcoholics Anonymous. Not even for them, will democrats take back God. So we have got a bunch of democrats who are now godless, it is any wonder we don't trust them? In bed with the lobbyists of Planned Parenthood, the biggest abortion provider in the nation.
I say that we must bring a spiritual element into the war on drugs and alcohol, that trying to destroy that concept so legalized abortion could fly, also did a great deal of harm to our young people's ability to fight drug and alcohol addiction. We not only harm the fetus with a belief in legalized killing of the fetus, but we harm everyone's belief in a higher power that in the final analysis can help a great many people whip drug and alcohol addiction, has already helped many people who continue to believe and use a higher power to stay clean and sober.
Oh, but do you think the typical democratic liberal would admit he or she could ever be wrong about anything? Not in this day and age. A bunch more arrogant and stubborn people we have not had trying to take over in a long time. As far as a belief in outright killing goes, this the worst bunch ever!
The Arizona Republic still won't print my letters. I am too much of a fanatic for them. The liberals have figured if they can control the media they will eventually win, but they have underestimated the good sense of many of the American people. If they try to control everyone's mind and thinking through the newspaper then people just don't read the editorial pages, or they do like I do, read with a grain of salt.
Legalized abortion did not change my belief in a higher power. To me God and legalized abortion are not on the same page. Anybody with any sense knows they are not. But if they have killed their belief in a higher power that won't accept killing, they are not letting that still small voice through. Man will never be able to discover everything. There will always be some mysteries unseen but still real. Our own sense of logic and common sense has to deduce some of these.
Women have always been taught to protect their young until in 1973 women were no longer to be taught this belief. According to the powers that be. Which is why I believe Roe and Wade must be overturned in order to resurrect the stronger belief in a higher power that will save the fetus as well as many of our young now addicted to drugs, alcohol, and endless violence. We have been teaching our young with legalized abortion not to believe in a God. So what has come to pass with that kind of teaching? More and more violence. Less and less ability to control it. More and more drugs. More and more lawlessness. This has been the glamorous age of the outlaw. Romanticizing drugs and danger.
Until we have had had enough and can pinpoint the cause of a crumbling society where addiction rules, nothing significant is really going to change. We need spiritual reformation in a big way!