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!