Contemplating broken dreams as life is winding down

It's that kind of day, thinking about what I wanted to happen in my life compared to what actually did. Come to think of it I was grateful I survived. I used to ask God just to let me live to 70 years old to be with my family, and he could take me any time after that. Here I am to be 79 next month so it looks like I got a bonus. Still I find old age to be lonelier than I expected it to be. Guess that stands to reason when people I know are passing from these realms every few weeks.
Next week there will be another memorial service in here for Clyde who had become a recluse due to poor health in the last few years, so there might not be too many there who remember him but many will be going to support Barbara, his wife, who was a very active figure around the complex. I saw her in the swimming pool a couple of times just before Clyde died. She was always having a little grandchild over to tend, so Clyde was seeing her family in the apartment all the time. It was very hard for him to get into a wheel chair or scooter anymore. Both legs were shriveled from having polio in childhood.
I like to think of him springing out of his old body with shoulders over developed during the years following paralysis and walking on two healthy legs again, in the spirit world of course.
I was amused to find the reasons there can be no god posted on Facebook by Bill, my most frequent critic. Carl Sagan, the famous astronomer, and another who did not believe in the existence of God, is his favorite author. Stands to reason Bill would be an atheist. That's all right. He is allowed. I also remember reading Brocca's Brain by Carl Sagan where he scoffed at the idea of people imagining they could dream about the future. I thought well, great astronomer that he is, Carl Sagan does not know everything because I have had many quite startlingly specific dreams about a future event which came to pass. And I have known others who had similar dreams. Prophets, shamans, mediums, psychics, and just ordinary people have been having these dreams for thousands of years, but there are always folks in the crowd who could not be convinced by any reasonable proof. It is their loss.

So I really have no problem in believing there is an afterlife, but it is just getting through the last difficult years when it's more difficult to get around that I am concerned about. I do expect to record all the changes in my perceptions as departure approaches. I think they will be quite interesting.
I do perceive the spirit as much lighter than our form here and capable of getting places a great deal faster. That will be a boon. Then I can attend events I can't now even though I will be invisible, only there in spirit. Right now I am envying the spirits their fast access. If I were a spirit I would be visiting in Utah all the next month, taking in the 4th of July where my son Raymond will be emceeing a big annual talent show. He will also be playing with a band he has gotten together for the festival in the middle of July. As it is now, if I struggled up there in my body, my relatives would all be alarmed at how stiff my knees had gotten and that I seemed capable of toppling over at any given moment.
I have begun posting my memoirs again and they would be nervous about their effects on people reading my blog in Utah, as indicated on my neo counter. I had four encounters with a second hired man who began to use me in what I considered a form of revenge on my father who he resented and evidently thought was a bad man not deserving of his good fortune in acquiring ranches and property with the help of his father. I had to include him in my memoirs since he had a considerable stressful impact on my life. I have acknowledged the bad behaviors of my father as well in writing these memoirs.
I did not anticipate there being such a fallout to writing the story of my childhood, but if you are the target of criminal activities, your journey back into the past may not be welcome by many. I could not very well ignore these criminal activities by two men since they were part of the reason I, too, was crippled in childhood as surely as if I had had polio. My father's bad drinking and my mother's angry response were other reasons I am sure that I developed chronic fatigue syndrome as a child about which little is still known. I think a mysterious virus I contracted played a role, since I was the only child in town to come down with it.
Any dreams I had of a great career, fame, and fortune were broken along with my stamina. It takes stamina to have a successful career in this world. I knew my health had been broken by the time I was twenty years old. Now I would have to figure out how to live with disability and hope that I could work enough to feed my family when I needed to.
Once you have become accustomed to your limitations it is as though you have never been any other way. My twenty years in a poor Mexican neighborhood was spent there because of disability. These poor people knew how to be poor and still have a good time and enjoy life. They taught me some valuable lessons in playing the hand that fate deals you. Which is your destiny.
Some more success oriented people from my background scoffed at the idea there could be such a disability. There were other words for what I had--laziness was one of them. So I would distance myself if I could not handle reactions. I migrated you might say to another country from where I was raised. Arizona did not know me so maybe they would accept me better. Arizonans were certainly used to accepting the poor migrant. They have a long history of it.
I did think that my original country, Utah, would be served by my telling my story. They needed to address any wrongs that might have occurred to try to see that such injustices did not happen so easily again. I was born into a family of alcoholic sons. The Mormon members of the family did not deal well with alcoholism nor with the homosexual behaviors that developed as a result of men spending long weeks camped out without the company of women and other causes I am sure.
People still struggle today with homosexual behaviors. The Mormon church launched off a big campaign to fight gay marriage which succeeded in defeating the proposed measure in California, infuriating the large population of gays who are out with it and vocal. I believe that gays should have what they want in this instance because they believe it will help them to be happier in a very difficult life style, a style most of them say was not chosen.
I certainly did not think my mother and dad's marriage which was one affected by secrets and lies was preferable. I believe there must be honesty at all costs, and the admitting of gay feelings is very apt to break up a heterosexual marriage sooner or later. The Mormon church seems to promote the keeping of secrets in order to sustain marriage between a man and a woman. I experienced that as a marriage made in hell. People are not urged to tell the truth. Where is the religion in living a lie?
I had to keep silent for decades about perceiving my father's homosexual side as a mere child because that society was not conducive to telling the truth about that. I have meant to surface the lies. This marriage almost destroyed both my mother and dad.
So people have to be careful what policies they promote as religious for fear they are neither wise or honest. I would be constantly trying to rebuke my parents for lying. Is that the role we want our children to have to play? I would say homosexual behavior is one of the deepest darkest secrets married people still harbor. I figured my dad had lied constantly since childhood. If a child is rewarded for lying, is he going to stop? He lied when he got married. And he kept on lying. Pretty soon my mother was tempted to stray and she began to lie on a much grander scale than she had ever done before.
And I got caught in the middle and nearly crushed by the jealous participant in one of his affairs who violated my innocence. My mother's secret participants in her affairs were always a threat to the shaky stability of our 'home.' Other wives whose husbands were unfaithful in like manner retreated deep into religion and pretended all was well. All living a lie. And who wants to shoot the messenger who brings out the truth? People who live in fantasy, that is who. Who become even more ferocious about protecting their relationships if they sense they are unstable.
I am the messenger who might get shot for revealing the harsh truths of my childhood and that is a fact, so I stay in exile, in another country, recognizing there are all kinds of reasons why you might not be able to go home again.

Doc's karaoke therapy gone awry: Governor Brewer agrees with me on Illegals' Drug Trafficking violence

Doc tried to have an evening karaoke party with the biggest alcoholic buzz on I have seen in a while, which is not my purpose in doing karaoke therapy at all. I don't know when he will agree to sing karaoke in the morning when he is hungover and relatively sober. Until then karaoke is on hold!
Now to more important matters: Governor Brewer agrees with me that illegals trying to get in on the drug action any way they can are causing Arizona's big problem. We have got neighborhoods alive with gun fire. They are not safe! I lived in those neighborhoods 20 years and they are worse now. She may have exaggerated a trifle, but I will bet her critics have no idea what it is to live in a war zone right here in the good old USA.

DAUGHTERS OF THE SHADOW MEN--Memoirs--Chapter 23 "If a cowboy is lucky he finds one great horse"

My Aunt Vesta climbing Sadie's Nipples


DAUGHTERS OF THE SHADOW MEN

Chapter 23

The year I was ten and in the fifth grade I enjoyed Edison Alvey from Escalante as my teacher. When he would ask us to write stories I outdid myself. The last story I wrote for him was about a girl who committed suicide! That one might have alarmed him a little as he told my mother he thought maybe I might be a genius but he did not quite know how to handle my talent. I decided I better ease up a little before I got myself in trouble.
Edison knew all the popular songs and initiated a music class where we would sing the songs he wrote on the board. I recall “Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree” and that's about it, since I was never able to carry a tune well enough to distinguish myself with music. Edison was the only music teacher I ever really had.
Edison also took us on nature hikes. The most memorable one was to the Ice Tanks down past Sadie's Nipples. We were all made so happy by this hike that Dynamite even dropped his usual truculence and walked along without saying anything derogatory to Barbara and me at the end of the long day.
Barbara promised me that she and I would go to the 9-room cave even if we could not get anyone to go with us. She assured me that this hike would not be too hard for me as I balked at climbing to some of the places she did. She would climb up the front of the school house ledge like the boys did, but I would not. I used up all the bravery I had riding horses and had none to spare on sand rock ledges. True to her word she did take me to the 9 room cave, and on the way back she pointed up to the side of the ledge where Darrow Moosman had fallen to his death while rolling rocks, which only proved to me you could not be too careful scrambling around on these things. Darrow had danced on the edge and paid a terrible price.
We were sorry to see Edison go at the end of the year, but he had gotten a job in the Escalante High School where he planned to teach the rest of his days. I had not thought where I might go to high school.
Considering my deadly fatigue during the following summer of hard work after we lost Leah, the hired girl, I didn't even know if I would live that long.

Also the spring Edison left I had another encounter with Cecil, Grandpa's resentful hired man, which did not seem too bad on the surface but I became very worried about what could come of his unwelcome interest in me.
How it came about was that Daddy and I went down in the draw during the spring roundup to bring up some cattle. Daddy got me going with them and then went on to Boulder to do other tasks. The round-up of the cattle from the winter ranges was always a stressful time for him. Cecil must have seen him come back through town because pretty soon he rode up saying he had come to 'help' me. In the first place I did not like him observing my comings and goings but everything seemed okay until just before we rounded the turn into Boulder where we were more apt to be observed by someone. Cecil turned and rode up close to me and grabbed me around the leg exactly like a rough young cowboy might do to his girlfriend, only he was thirty years old and I was still only ten. To my relief he went no further, but the very fact he would lay his hands on me again after our encounter in our pasture was infuriating and very worrisome.
From then I spent time worrying about Cecil and how I could put an end to his attentions without really having to cause a scandal to do it. My over stressed mind certainly could not handle too many new things to worry about I thought before it broke down some way.
That was the summer of my deadly fatigue which I thought was probably it, the beginning of the end.

But a big highlight for me was Daddy's new horse Sorly. Before the Baker family moved to Richfield, Daddy bargained with the oldest son Hayward for a big colt his dad had gotten out of a lively work mare he bred to a local thoroughbred stallion. Daddy said the horse was big, but he thought the sorrel colt might just make a great cow horse and when he started working with Sorly he got even more excited. He said that he had not let him buck when he was breaking him because he was so intelligent and quick to learn.



Now that Daddy had broken Sorly and was riding him all the time he could not get over his lucky find. I thought he had probably found his horse of a life time the way he talked, and that proved to be true. Daddy was soon taking first place in the yearly judging of the best trained cow horses. Soon everybody in the country thought that my dad had spotted the makings of a great cow horse when no one else did, and now he was a wonder, so quick and fast and well trained he stood out.
The only thing Daddy had trouble with was training him to stand still after he roped off him. The reason for that was because Daddy had gotten so he never dismounted when he was roping calves for branding. The hired men threw the calf and did the branding while he caught another one. That way the branding went very fast and smooth, so Sorley only had to stand still in a calf roping competition on the Fourth of July or such.
The first year he competed in public he disgraced Daddy by running off with the calf he had roped when he dismounted to go tie him. Well, Sorly had been so excited the morning of the rodeo. Somehow he knew he was going on display. When Daddy rode him down to the store for something just before the rodeo, Sorly danced all the way. A dancing horse. My goodness. We had never owned a dancing cow horse before. But Daddy said the only time Sorly danced was on the 4th of July. He didn't dance when he was in for a long day of hard work.
I asked Daddy to let me ride him but he said no, I had better wait a couple of years until he settled down. I guess he did not want him running away with me somewhere because he was too excited by a new rider. Daddy was the only one who got to ride Sorly the first couple of years.
I had reason not to tell Daddy about Cecil bothering me though. He was still very apt to make a mountain out of molehill and try to kill him. He and Cecil still had to ride the winter ranges together where Daddy and Grandpa ran their cattle on Bounds Bench and King's Bench, but they had begun to fight and argue a lot.
The yellow palamino with the black mane and tail out of Grandpa King's stock that Cecil broke used to take the prizes for being the best trained cow horse, but not any more. That probably did not help Cecil's frame of mind either.
Grandpa King's horses had been outdone by the poor Widow Baker's colt nobody thought would amount to anything. I was very proud of my dad for seeing the potential of this horse He was rewarded by finding the horse that defines a great horseman, a horse as intelligent and quick to understand as any cowboy could desire. I always knew my dad was a great trainer when he had a good horse. Sorly proved it.
Well, it was good my dad was to have a few victories because there were a lot of defeats. And more bad trouble to come with his drinking.

Header and Cowboy roping the horse by Connie. Thank you, my friend!

I did make Farmer's Market chicken soup today thinking of my ailing granddaughter, Laura Lynne

I found out that my beautiful granddaughter Laura (in photo with her baby) had to have a hysterectomy yesterday because of severe endometriosis even though she is still in her early thirties. I felt bad all day to think she had to undergo this kind of surgery so early in her young life, but thank goodness she was able to have two children, now 1 and 2, after trying a number of years. I can understand now why conceiving was hard for her.
I have not lived around this granddaughter for years as her mother moved to Flagstaff after hers and my son's divorce. Her sister lived up there. She seems to have been happy with her move, but that meant I would rarely see my son Gary's two girls.
Gary did take me to Laura's beautiful wedding. I will never forget what a gorgeous bride she was. And she has always seemed so happy with her young husband. He loves to camp and hunt and fish, so they have enjoyed the woods up around Flagstaff. At the wedding I learned that Laura's in-laws are avid horse people, so maybe Laura has ridden some of those horse trails around Flagstaff just like the young girl in my header photo (made by Connie). When her daughter was born, my great granddaughter, I bought her the cutest little snuggle blanket knitted by a woman over to the Farmer's Market. I thought the little girl, Kerynn, would like a little blanket of her own up in the cool Flagstaff country. I gave the little boy, Wyatt, a purple tye dye shirt from Farmer's Market. I gave the little girl a tye dye purple dress, too. Farmer's Market provides me with the kind of gifts I like to give!
I talked to Gary who said the surgery went well and she will be coming home after two more days in the hospital. That is fast! I had a caesarian so I know about how she feels. That was not fun! All the other mothers relieved and happy after birth and me still in pain. I had some complications so had to stay in the hospital 7 days.
I will be so glad to hear from Laura that she is well on the road to recovery. She tends children in her home while her husband is away working construction. She has loved being able to stay home with her own children by taking care of someone else's. She loves children, and is a gentle soul, so she would be an ideal baby sitter. Anyway I am hoping to see a message from her up on Facebook soon!
The chicken soup was delicious, the best chicken ever, raised the organic way, and all the vegetables are organic, too. I made chicken rice soup and put a little too much rice in it, but it was still very good. I had enough to freeze a nice big container and to give a container to Doc. I was thinking of Laura as I made it, and hope someone gives her something good to eat after she comes home!

I got to sing karaoke on Doc's channel today

Getting to sing with the big boys (the guys who can sing) is what I always wanted to do just like I wanted to ride horses and punch cows with the real cowboys. (as my header by Connie suggests I got to do) Most of my early singing BFs and husbands never even thought of letting me sing. Pierre who was close to sixty when I met him first started letting me sing but he wasn't able to give me much confidence because he did not have a whole lot having learned to sing country mostly just by having the country western station on all the time. But I did end up singing to a few of the karaoke Westward Ho parties he was responsible for, but I was scared to death and never had any fun with it.
But after all what is karaoke for but to encourage everyone to try to have fun singing? So I kept buying karaoke discs.
Doc sneered at country western for the first few years of our relationship so I was not able to get past that to the fun. But finally he realized we can just ACT like a country western karaoke singing couple even if we aren't one.
My son Raymond is going to be singing with the band he got together and named "Out on Bond" this Saturday night in his dad's hometown. Doc wrote and told him he should have named his band "Jack: we're Mormons!" Raymond and his cousins advertised their singing group after Raymond drove all the way to Utah to sing to an old cowboy's funeral, "We put the fun in funerals" Raymond is going to be singing in a bar but he is not going to be drinking. That should be interesting. I got so I never drank a drop of alcohol in bars. I tried to set an example to my sons while still having fun. My philosophy was we had to take singing back from the beer companies!
I am going to embed the video we made this morning in my blog, then I will go down and put it in Rick n Doc Emde's blog. Doc is a lot of fun. In fact I think that has been his downfall just like the song says. He liked to have fun so much he spent way too many hours in bars and ended up an alcoholic, supporting the business. That's the story of most alcoholics. They are basically fun loving guys who got hooked on what pays the bills in the bars (they like to make you feel guilty for not drinking as fast as you can).
I will never forget when my mother who hated my dad's drinking started selling beer in her store because she said the profits were so good. In fact, up in Escalante, I always thought it was funny that the Bishop ended up running the liquor store in town, because when he sold his retail business he and his wife decided to retain the liquor store to earn a little bit of extra money while retired! People seemed to accept it, but my dad had a fit over my mother's fall into selling beer. Guess he expected the women to stay pure. My mother gradually starting letting the guys drink on the premises even though that was supposed to be against the law. She didn't have a bar license. She had put in a couple of booths so people could come in and visit in her old fashioned country store. Now it was like a combination bar and country store, so we five girls spent our teen years selling beer to guys who loved to hang around our store and party with the King sisters, only my mother didn't drink the beer and neither did we so that usually kept the party from gettin' too wild. My mother did not have to drink to turn into a very rebellious wife. My dad just made her too angry while she was stuck home having five kids.
We sure did get to be fun loving bar tenders and were undoubtedly the talk of the country side, courtesy of our mother. I thought it served my dad right because the pool hall where he always went didn't really welcome women so the men could give the women the slip.
Now she was going to get even, as I do in my song today, "I just stepped in from catching you steppin out on me". That song could have been the story of my mother and dad's married life. Only my dad stepped out in a way my mother never imagined, but there was no mistaking her intentions to get even with her beer selling.
Then they would meet at home and fight about it.
When my dad built his last home, he designated one big room the pool room and bought a pool table, and that is where I started to play pool. I met a guy just before he died who sang all night the first time we went out, and then he proceeded to teach me how to play pool, a game I tried to master I loved so much. Guess I took after old dad. I broke the no women barrier when I played pool in the Escalante pool hall where my dad hung out.
Anyway, that guy named Ron became my second husband and the father of my two younger kids, Ronda, my dancer, and Dan, the basketball player. Ron spent his life on the road driving 18 wheelers. We soon parted so the kids hardly ever knew him, but he was a fun loving guy in the days I knew him, partying his way all across the US. And always singing to his CB radio. Why, he sang me songs I had never even heard of. He could imitate a lot of singers, including Johnny Mathis, Earnest Tubbs, and a bunch of other country western singers. He was really good on Johnny Mathis songs, sounded just like him. That voice really got me. Which is why I had two kids by him. He was also the picture of grace dancing on roller skates or ice skates. He grew up on skates. Ronda inherited her grace dancing the west coast swing from him.
So I have always loved fun loving guys, but if any violence started, especially after I was divorced from my first husband because of his behavior when drinking, I would invite that man right back out the door.
These old guys like Doc aren't too violent while drinking but I still won't ever live with him just in case. I keep myself independent and go home when the fun loving guy gets drunk.

My old alcoholic BF sings Anytime for me karaoke style

Well, Doc and I finally launched off our new season of singing after receiving our 200 classic country and Christmas karaoke songs. I hope to persuade Doc to do most of the singing while I do the acting. I also picked out the songs. They still have him cussing and wondering what made him do it. I told him he won't sing jazz either, so I had to light a fire under him. I don't think this first video is half bad because he found a way to be Doc and I found a way to be me and we got through three old country western songs, including Anytime which I probably heard my first husband Dean sing more than any other besides Cheatin' Heart which I think now was also a message to me. I didn't realize it at the time since I was spending my precious time with him not with somebody else. He was too mean a drunk for me to stay with too long beautiful singer or not. Doc is not mean but he is still a boozehound.

Dante and the Pink Guitar! He's coming home in two weeks!

Trust Dante to see that a dramatic photo was taken of him with the pink guitar. He is taking lessons, but he is always the showman. I am getting a charge out of the bits of philosophy and quotes he is posting on Facebook. Here is one today: "Dante Hitt: There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done: school and prison." That could make a grandma scratch her gray locks.
I told him to get ready to make a video as he wrote he is coming home in a couple of weeks. It is summer and he probably decided he needed to spend some time in Phoenix before going back to school. His dad Dan is up in Utah working hard and helping his cousins get ready for the Boulder Heritage Festival in July. He is walking a couple of miles to work as he could not get his motorcycle up there, so he should be nice and trim by September. Dante said we ought to take in a movie, and my computer has started to tremble and shake at the very mention of Dante coming near. I will tell him his dad is gone and would not be able to restore what he did to it, so he better be very careful! Computers have a great overwhelming fascination for him.
It is finally getting hot enough for me in Phoenix to go into the pool. Just a few more days! I will have to tell Dante so he can come over and swim. I will need to pick up an extra pair of bathing trunks for him at the thrift store.
Raymond just wrote a charming blog (Cowboys and Bohemians) post about his "Dog Gymnast", Baby. Trust Raymond to teach his dog to turn somersaults. He also catches us up on the trials and triumphs of trying to 'make it' in this world. He doesn't know if he will get to work on a movie or not, but will have to wait until fall to find out. In the meantime, he is singing and playing for his supper everywhere he can.
I am sure he will relate to Doc and me setting out to practice karaoke now until Christmas. We plan to make a few videos of the grizzled reluctant country singer and his country bumpkin GF who insists on him singing what he regards as lousy country ditties he cannot believe are songs. Yesterday he discovered Loretta Lynne's hit song back when called "I just stepped in from seeing you steppin' out on me." I assured him that was a valid country song, yes! Give me the day when I could sing as well as Loretta Lynne. But I am still tryin'.

Don't you love this butterfly header Connie sent me? Down on Doc's computer it looks great out on the road with green on either side which doesn't show up on my little bitty monitor.

Have to put writing more of my memoirs off for a while

I thought I was getting to the point of resuming my memoir writing, but after this weekend I don't think so. I do think that Utah relatives have to get more used to the idea of a family member writing a memoir that is for the world not just for family. I have been heading this way for a long time.
This morning Doc insisted I sit down and watch a documentary he had recorded called "When Doctors Got It Wrong" about the treatment of the mentally ill, particularly the schizophrenic and what happened when states started closing the big mental institutions and sending the mentally ill back to the communities as they called it. In the opening of the documentary a former patient was saying that you could go to a psychiatrist in the days of years of incarceration and be locked up for life on the basis of a 2 minute interview! That kind of snap judgment is what led to my being locked up after possibly only a 1 minute interview with a psychiatrist and being put through a terrible ordeal before I could get out that caused me to be a whole lot sicker when I got out than when I went in.
These were the kind of abuses that led to these big institutions closing down, but what followed was somewhat of a horror, too, and still is. Mental patients ended up on the street or in jail before the communities were prepared and funded to receive them at all. At the close of the documentary it is stated that the Los Angeles County jail is the biggest mental institution now in the state of California.
Mental patients who are deemed able to maintain an apartment are certified to come in a HUD housing complex like this one, even though some of these prove unable to avoid trouble and must be evicted. Group homes for the mentally ill is another solution that parents of the mentally ill were able to get together and lobby for. They were desperate to help their mentally ill children who had been turned into the street.
Schizophrenia, it was explained, is a condition of the brain that the person may be born with or may develop later. They account for a certain amount of mentally ill patients. Many in here have been diagnosed as 'bi-polar' which appears to be a less serious mental illness. The psychiatrists have to determine this condition from behavior, history, etc, since there is no test that will prove its existence. Brain abnormalities in schizophrenics can be detected by brain scans. Those are really sick people with the only treatment drugs especially effective for this condition. Schizophrenics with brain abnormalities have been able to get stable for years with the help of these drugs.
I had an uncle who was hospitalized a number of times and finally diagnosed with dementia praecox as it was called in those days, deemed the worst mental illness and incurable. The drugs developed later on might have helped him however, but drinking was taboo, which he would sometimes do when he got out of the hospital. The family was always trying to keep him from drinking.
I thought there were conditions of work, alcoholic patterns, and generational influences that produced an unusual amount of bisexual men in that country. Which is why I decided to write a memoir about my dad whose alcoholism was compounded by a bisexuality abnormality as well. Since the bisexuals were very secretive this has led to a lot of reaction to my memoir.
My poor mother did not seem to have a clue as most of the women did not. I thought if she had been educated as to what the signs and symptoms were she could have coped with my dad's behavior with more insight and less craziness of her own in handling him.
My Grandmother who did not seem to have a clue either about my dad's problem retreated into religion and remained ignorant as other women did who were married to such men. Or had sons who were alcoholic and looked to be bisexual as well.
Since my dad did not have any sons he tended to try to turn his daughters into sons which is how I became more aware of his activities. I was encouraged to ride horses from the time I could be taken for rides on a horse when I was just a toddler. I would walk down to my Grandpa King's when I was only four years old and ask him or the hired men for a horse to ride. I would take my younger sister with me and we would be put on some old nag deemed safe enough for us.
I certainly did not think my dad was the only bisexual in that country. I thought bisexuality was fairly common among the older generation, his and my generations, as well as in those that followed, especially in the alcoholics.
I suppose that is a fairly shocking claim to those who are not used to hearing about such a topic, so that is why my memoir may already be causing a stir. I was 5 years old when molestation forced me to become wise beyond my years, as happens to every child who is molested. Some of these poor children must face death. They are going to endure the tortures of the damned at the hands of some abductors before they die. I feared that could happen to me. I did not know if I would be let go each time, following three abductions by the hired man when my father was absent from the ranch and my mother was otherwise preoccupied in the house.
To save myself I learned to curb my wandering ways and to stick close to the house, keeping my mother in sight. While I tried to figure out who I could tell and whether this man had done something bad enough to be shot. I thought he would be killed if I told my dad. As it was somebody did shoot him not long after I started surfacing the story three years later, but from what I heard he did not die, but was never seen around that country again.
I no longer felt entirely safe again and indeed was not safe as I was targeted again for inappropriate attention by another hired man I became deathly afraid of.
Well, it is sometimes hard to put the plight of children first and allow unpleasant facts about the past to surface. So I will persist in trying to get this memoir written even though it looks as though it is going to take more time for me get the strength to do it.

I thought my cowboy dad struggled with his bisexuality and suffered over it, so I loved him for that

Some of us have mixed feelings about a dad who was an alcoholic and may have even had criminal tendencies as well as bisexual issues, but I always thought my dad was struggling with his severe problems. So this inspired love and compassion for him because of his very difficult life. He could not talk about it. That just wasn't done. He had to suffer in silence. And sometimes I did not think he was going to live to be a very old man, but he fought his alcoholism and lived to the age of 64.
There were many things my dad did well. He knew how to train horses. He knew how to run a ranch. Everything got done at the right time of the year. The water got tended. The ranch produced. He always took pride in his work.
My sisters and I did everything we could to help him to live, because we knew it would be a big loss to our families if he died. We valued and appreciated his strengths. Thanks to him we girls always had financial security. We always knew he would help us out of a bind, and when he died he left us with a considerably larger than usual inheritance.
I felt I had been crippled by all his problems in my youth, so that money was a godsend for me, enabling me to live a more normal life until I became too disabled to work. He made up in his old age for his early years of excess. He took care of his family and helped relieve some of the health problems he had helped cause.
He also tried to keep my mother around because he thought a family should stay together, but his early years of partying had done the relationship too much damage.
He wanted all his daughters to build houses and live on the property he had bought in Arizona. That was the dream he was talking about when he died quite suddenly of a heart attack. I think he thought he might live on and on, so he wanted all his five daughters close by.
I got furious at him when I detected some inappropriate behavior in his attitude toward his grandson. I thought it must have harkened back to the days when the cowboys all camped out in one bed and one tent on the range, but I figured this was how my dad's sexual nature became split. I thought the absolute worst thing that could happen was for him to do anything further along these lines that would so upset and violate my son's trust in him. I called and asked my son when he reached adulthood if he had done anything more than offer to pay him to sleep in the same room with him, and he said no. What he said to me back when my son was only 13 was that he wanted him to sleep in the same bed and that is when I hit the roof! Wouldn't you? I told him my son would not be comfortable with that, so my dad backed off. He could see I had fire in my eye and was suspicious of his motives.
But I think parents can't be suspicious enough when somebody wants to do something that doesn't seem right with their children. I feel if I had been suspicious enough at an earlier time one of my sons would not have been molested by a much older kid in his teens who wanted to join the younger boys in their slumber party. We were on vacation and my little son said the teen liked kids. Oh, my word, if I had just been more suspicious of an older teen that wanted to join a little kids' slumber party! But I wasn't. I could have absolutely denied my permission, but I didn't. I was too soft, too easy. Yet, I felt uneasy. I didn't like the feral look in the kid's eyes when I met him. Shifty-eyed I thought.
I just don't think we can be too careful, too suspicious when it comes to kids. It is a long life and most parents are apt to get careless now and then. And then follows years of regret.
But let us face it, we have many in our society with criminal tendencies. This older kid predator told me he had been violated nightly by a teenager when he was five his mother took into her home and allowed to sleep with him! Those who have been molested extensively as he was, he said this went on for two years, grow up to be pedofiles. We have to accept that people we love and depend on may have had these experiences in their lives and may molest in turn when they are adults, if there is opportunity. Painful as it is, we must face those possibilities to protect our children.
I knew one mother who trusted the kids' grandfather enough to let her children stay with their grandparents. Her oldest daughter finally told her he was molesting them. She was going to have him arrested, and before that could happen he shot himself, but what dreadful pain the family endured when a trusted member of the family could not resist a temptation to cross the line.

The buses that never came!

I had to go to Walgreen's to pick up my meds this morning as I was not able to take one of my pills because I was out, so could not wait. I sat on the bus bench where I was joined in a half an hour by Jack, another Westward Ho senior. The bus had not come after an hour. I finally noticed a bus going north on a street west of the Westward Ho and began to think something was amiss. Another disabled resident joined us after some more time passed and I said no buses have gone that I have seen. What could have happened to all the buses??? So she called Metro Transit and was informed that early that morning all buses going up Central had been rerouted. We were told we would have to walk up to Roosevelt to catch the fast transit or 0 or to 7th street to pick up that bus.
Old Jack took off on a slow shuffle to walk the seven blocks to 7th street, while the other lady and I trudged north, caught the fast transit and then transferred to 17 going east on McDowell and to Walgreen's.
Two hours later than I was expected I finally shuffled into Doc's who said he read in the paper after I was gone that a large sign was being installed on a tall building across from the terminal and with helicopters buzzing around it the buses had to be rerouted as precaution. I read the paper before leaving but just did not read that! So he guessed what had caused my delay.
I had to stagger home and take a nap before I could make it over to the Farmer's Market store. The outside market was long gone, but the inside one complete with big sunflowers for sale was open. I purchased a large container of maple yogurt and
milk and fresh cherries and here I am ready now to complete the day inside.
One more of life's little adventures that gives us something to talk about. All that walking around just as it was getting hot was probably good for us as long as it did not kill us!

My mom preferred to live in fantasy and denied her attraction to gay men

I am wearing the cowgirl outfit in the video below I might have worn in Utah to a summer celebration complete with music, dance, rodeo, whatever. I used to look forward to those celebrations every year, but these are the years of my exile from Utah because I have undertaken the task of writing about the homosexual husband and my father in my mother's life, and I suspected in the lives of a number of other women married to the cowboys and ranchers of those days who spent so much time camping out tending to their cattle. My grandfather did not marry until he was 30 years old, my father until he was 26, plenty of time for those behaviors to become a way of life, but anathema for the naive but very strong minded women they married who simply were not going to register such abnormalities in the men they preferred to glorify and try to make into the romantic figures of their fantasies. I am afraid too many women are addicted to romance instead of to the truth. So the truth is made into an unwelcome stranger they must fight with all their might and banish from their ken if possible.
I always hated my mother's addiction to romance in the midst of her very unhappy marriage to my father. She never stopped talking about how unhappy she was and how miserable a man my father was. As a result I thought her memoir about her life with my father, the Kings, and Boulder was marred by such negativity about him it stopped short of being a great memoir.
I now am faced with the task of revealing what she did to endure the marriage which she left out of her memoirs completely. She could not bring herself to admit that she started a long string of affairs after she got a tubal ligation ten years into the marriage. She was only 30 years old, unhappy, and now could not get pregnant.
I feared the worst and my fears I thought were soon realized. Even if I suggest affairs it would appear that I would feed gossip about my mother. She was gossiped about a great deal as it was, I am sure, even though she never admitted to having the affairs. She was so hot tempered none of her girls tried to force our adverse opinions on her. I remember once I made up my mind to talk to her about chasing after a movie maker who came to town. She said in a very cold voice, "If you don't shut up, I am going to run this car off the road into a ditch!" I did not know but what she would carry out her threat, so I shut up.
I felt very depressed for many years over what she was doing on top of what my father had been doing. In fact, just as she was getting a good start, he began winding down from impaired health with emphysema and alcohol abuse. My mother said he had become impotent, so that was even more reason for her to stray. Once she even ran off with a young hitchhiker she picked up on the road when she was in her fifties. She bragged he was only 28, but then one awful thing leads to another.
Even though my mother never seemed to be able to connect my father to homosexual behavior, I thought his affairs over the years she was having children led to her having affairs. She was dissatisfied, miserable, but did not want to leave the marriage poor and unable to earn a very good living. She wanted a big settlement which he was not willing to give her so they wrangled for years over that. He knew very well she was not sure of what he had done except drink a lot, so he made her feel as guilty as possible over her affairs.
I thought this was so unfair of him, and when they divorced and he was going around trying to get sympathy over her adultery, I said coldly,"Daddy, you weren't even attracted to women, so how can you claim virtue for not having affairs with them?" He didn't like where this was going and never mentioned Mother's adultery to me again.
He had blame in this awful marriage. All men who marry women and can't stop their homosexual affairs need to tell the women in their lives the truth at some point. I realize that is a lot to ask, but in the most advanced circles of gay men I think most would agree this is good conduct toward women. Some men want to marry, have kids and live 'normal' lives the worst way, so the temptation is very great to try to play into the fantasies of some women. Most of the women end up being deceived, and in some cases the men are deceived as to the woman's penchant for homosexual affairs.
In the big cities gay communities address these problems much better than they do in the little towns across America where the attitudes of the churches toward homosexuality prevails. People can take a line in the bible and use it to club the homosexual nearly to death. Some churches, as the Mormon one in my home state of Utah, has rehabilitation for guys who believe themselves to be gay, probably generally a failure if the truth were to be told.
Imagine a church that does not love the truth, but if a church claims to be the only true church on earth and that all people must be baptized into it to enter heaven, I can't think this church can love the truth too well. I did not think the Mormon church handled homosexual problems well. But instead persecuted just about everyone they could that was connected to them. Including me. I am just about at odds with the church on how to handle every aspect of this problem.
Another reason why I do not believe in Mormon heaven, but some people like to live in fantasy about that, too, and do. And will have to await the hereafter to see whether there really is only a Mormon heaven and everyone will have to join the church to enter.
I will take my chances! In fact I am busy imagining a hereafter where therapy is offered for Mormons who are disappointed in a heaven that is not Mormon!

What's going on in my world today

I left my apartment this morning in the outfit pictured hoping to attract some attention. I went up to the Greek place to have a short stack of wheat pancakes and then I went out to the patio to talk to residents about a possible karaoke Christmas party with my new six pack of karaoke Christmas songs I have ordered (and Doc paid for). The karaoke lovers were all enthusiastic but nervous about Doc attending since he sort of tore up the karaoke party last year. I had to order him to go home after he made enough people mad with his intemperate remarks. But by that time the main and best karaoke singer who was sober had got mad and gone home, too. He asked me if I could not order Doc to stay sober. I said no, so far, he had never listened to that request, but he would go home if asked. He is bound to put in an appearance especially since he has paid for the new discs.
You might ask why order them? It is to keep Doc occupied with something else from now until Xmas practicing karaoke. We can make videos where he will not have to interact with anyone else. All the drinkers hardly dare make an appearance in public here, since public misbehavior can get them thrown out of here faster than anything. House rules forbid taking alcoholic drinks into the common areas.
I was out to the patio last night talking to Tony, who is the son of another of Doc's drinking buddies. He now has a bad problem with alcoholism and in the recession lost his job and is homeless. He has been staying here with his dad quite a bit but has now been told he has to leave in two weeks. I am worried about him as Dave, his father has been, because he is suicidal and another of Dave's sons already committed suicide. Tony's mother was Pima Indian and she died unexpectedly of cancer about six months ago. She wanted Tony to have her house on the reservation which was paid for but her white husband gave it to another relative. Tony who is also part Navaho through his dad, Dave, had probably expressed himself too strongly to this man while drinking. Doc does not like Tony because he is very articulate but too forceful when drinking. He expressed himself for about an hour and a half non stop in Doc's apartment and he did not dare order his father and him to go home, so he was not happy with Tony.
I like Tony very much when he sober, as he is extremely articulate, funny, and smart, but when he drinks whiskey, his favorite drink he says, he goes on the war path. So he is an extremely tough person to help.
There are other younger alcoholics in here who have gotten disability probably from either the ravages of drugs and alcohol, but who knows what triggers off mental illness. When Tony is sober he does not seem to be mentally ill, but he has very severe problems with employment because of a feeling of more entitlement than the jobs he can get I am sure, and if he kills himself as he almost did last winter with alcohol, he will be seen as extremely mentally ill now dead after the fact. Dave was very worried about his suicide threats last winter. I just hope that the time he has spent here talking to a number of people who now call him friend he will feel better about himself.
His mother must be a powerful spirit because I felt in touch with her almost immediately, but I feel her withdrawing now, knowing that he must leave here. His dad is basically such a recluse who never comes out and mingles with people in order to stay out of trouble, that I fear he does not want Tony to live with him and try to be his caretaker. But if he kills himself this will be another tragedy in his father's life.
So here he is now the sole parent faced with the dilemma of how to help his son. I told Tony yesterday that if Dave wants to help him he should quit drinking so he can assert more control over Tony's drinking. Telling him that if he did put him on his lease as caretaker, they both could not just sit around and drink! Tony just nodded at that. But it sounds like he lives in such a drinking culture both here and up on the reservation around Tuba City there is little hope of him staying sober. I have not felt so upset about the Indian drinking problem for a long time.
What have we done causing alcohol to become such a problem for Indians on the reservation, but hey, alcohol is a huge problem everywhere. We just have to muster up our courage to go on in the middle of it, trying this and that, and hoping for the best even when the worst seems on its way.

Medium interviews famous author after reading bio "Mark Twain: Man in White" by Michael Sheldon

Mark Twain has always been one of my favorite authors because he was such a great humorist. I sent the autobiography he wrote about his early days around to people in the family I thought it was so funny and good. He died April the 19th in 1910. This book was published 2010!
I thought I would try an interview of Mark Twain's spirit. I am sure that would appeal to him as he has probably always wanted to come back as a spirit and be interviewed by a medium.
GERRY: I must say it is only right that I interview you in a spirit of irreverence since that was always your attitude toward great men like Shakespeare who you thought tended to be revered too greatly by mankind. You did become the most famous writer in the world for a long time, so that probably contradicts your philosophy about famous men, wouldn't you say.
MARK TWAIN: I was unable to prevent my great fame because I had to continue to make a living once I started by the sale of my books. Now I can see how a published writer becomes famouser and famouser just in order to pay the bills and keep the wolves from the door.
GERRY: I loved James Agee who said, "Let us all now praise famous men" since people are so impressed by fame they tend to over do their adulation of them.
MARK TWAIN: I agree with his sneer in principle but found myself violating my own aversion to famous men more and more.
GERRY: Accordingly I decided I would avoid fame in order to write about very unpopular subjects which famous men could not touch or they might have become paupers over night as people boycotted their books. My needs were taken care of with disability benefits so why not?
MARK TWAIN: A worthy thought, and so what might some of those subjects be?
GERRY: The homosexual husbands who marry and deceive their wives and children for starters.
MARK TWAIN: Oh Lord no, I could never have written about such a subject. In fact I did not even know there was such a thing, or I could not admit to knowing it in my books. There are only certain subjects a popular humorist can touch once he or she becomes famous and that is not one of them.
GERRY: I think my subject could eventually inspire humor when it has been around and surfaced long enough.
MARK TWAIN: Agreed but you will have to remain unfamous for a very long time waiting for that to happen. I was not able to joke about such subjects in my time. Maybe that is why Shakespeare never left any autobiographies to enlighten the people about what he was really like.
GERRY: Of course, I am surprised you did not think of that when you were writing your book trying to poke holes in the reputation of the most famous writer in the world before you, William Shakespeare. He may have felt he had to keep silent because he was a homosexual who married and had children, and since he could not confess to it, he left no history about himself. Doesn't that make sense?
MARK TWAIN: Makes a lot of sense. I could have understood it better had I been a homosexual who married and had children. As it was I was heavily addicted to cigars and billiards and writing. I could not stop writing, I suppose because people were so accepting of a heterosexual guy marrying a lovely woman like my wife and having children, but making mistakes. Oh did I ever make mistakes, especially after she died and was not there to guide me and keep me being an attentive father. I acquired a secretary who was younger than I, a petite little woman who so beguiled me with flattery that I neglected my daughter who was very ill with epilepsy. I let her talk me into putting her in an institution environment and keeping her there all during her twenties. When I was finally cured of my infatuation with my young secretary and brought my daughter home, she died of a seizure when she was only thirty years old. I even let my secretary, Isabel was her name, as in Jezebel, talk me into sending her to Germany to live to see a doctor there. She could live in Germany but not in my lovely home with my secretary and me. You see when you come out of a violent seizure you may temporarily become violent and my little secretary was frightened to death of Jean's seizures and told the Doctor that I did not think I could take care of her, and then she told me the doctor did not think I could take care of her, that she would be better of in an institution, and the doctor thought she would be better off there instead of with a famous father who was too busy being famous to want her around having seizures.
GERRY: On reading this bio I did think that was the worst thing your secretary did was to influence you to keep your poor daughter away who was very gifted. She could speak several languages, she loved to ride horses, she was active, but oh so sad because her malady kept her from marrying or having a career. I related to her because of my early bouts of chronic fatigue starting in childhood. I eventually became a problem for the family because of the fragility that developed as a result of keeping my father's secrets along with being molested by his partners as well as from his alcoholism. I did not believe I could tell my father's secret until I was in my late fifties and even then it was not greeted with acceptance. In fact, it was not welcome at all and still isn't. I became disabled and since I had chronic fatigue even many doctors did not accept it as a valid disability even though I eventually could not work. But my stamina was compromised so I felt as though I was hobbled compared to other people throughout my life as your daughter certainly felt she was by her epilepsy. She would have had to be helped by her family to live a more enjoyable life. I thought the secretary lived a very enjoyable life actually living with you for a number of years, while she contrived to keep your daughter away and out of your hair.
MARK TWAIN: And I just bragged on my good health despite smoking so damned many cigars. I even turned my vices into something lovable for an old humorist to do, and caused many more men to take up smoking cigars and developing heart disease and high blood pressure. My epileptic daughter had already died by the time I came over here, so I had a lot of making up to her to do when I got here. My wife was not happy with me either. Then I had to watch my only living daughter be taken by a fortune hunter, a gambler and thief, who robbed her of her inheritance as much as he could, talked her into leaving what was left of the money she inherited from my books to him when she died. And none at all to her daughter who he only allowed her to see about a half an hour a day for years! Just when she needed her the most after he own father, a sensitive Russian musician, had died. She had been taught by me how to neglect a daughter, as I also neglected her too. She would leave home and go on singing tours thinking I was preoccupied with my relationship with my cute little secretary. And then after that I had to watch my grand daughter who inherited the last of my earnings on my books die in squalor and alone of alcoholism in her fifties.
GERRY: That was all very sad but you did have some good millionaire friends to your credit.
MARK TWAIN: I presume you are joking and giving me another poke about vacationing in Bermuda with my Standard Oil millionaire friend, Henry Rogers. Well, he was a good friend, but I could be justly accused of preferring the company of my millionaire friends to my poor daughters, not realizing that it was up to me to teach them how to be good friends with me by giving them enough of my time to make a difference. That is what so many busy famous people do, neglect their primary relationships because they don't see the immediate rewards for spending a lot of time with their children, especially handicapped ones.
GERRY: I am sure you have said quite enough about what happened to your family for people to get the idea.

Illegal Immigrants are Career Criminals (by Jennifer Kendall)

I saw this article on the Internet and now on Facebook on Stand With Arizona which I think is so pertinent to our Arizona problems as well as other border states I had to copy it for you to read.

Illegal Immigrants are Career Criminals
by Jennifer Kendall
06/15/2010


The attraction to America is undeniable, but those who are attracted aren’t always just looking for a better way of life. I had the opportunity to speak with a Border Patrol officer in Southern California who wished to remain anonymous. He spoke about the threat illegal immigration imposes on Americans. Many agree that illegal immigration directly correlates to the lack of jobs available, high medical costs, overpopulated prisons, poor education, congested freeways and higher crime rates. These are only a few of the results produced by illegal immigration, but fixing these issues is vital for the future of America.

When it comes to whom illegal immigrants are, the Border Patrol officer says “There are a certain amount of people in the group that are just looking for a better life. They’re hardworking people and they are coming here to do what people have done for many, many years, come here for opportunity. But there’s also a certain amount of those people that are career criminals, you know… they’re trying to manipulate the system. They just come here and break laws, not pay taxes, and benefit from all the public programs and that type of stuff.”

The amount of illegal aliens who break laws will never be known for sure, but those that were caught provide some pretty terrifying insight. The Government Accountability Office, (GAO), released a study it conducted in 2005 of 55,322 incarcerated illegal aliens. The study population averaged 8 arrests each...97% had more than one arrest and an astonishing 26% had over eleven arrests. This only included crimes committed in the US. How many crimes they each committed in their country of origin are unknown.

Each illegal alien in the study averaged 13 offenses and 24% of those offenses were for drug crimes. About 12% were for murder, robbery, assault and sexually related crimes. 21% of offenses were immigration offenses. The other offenses included property related offenses, traffic violations, fraud and obstruction of justice.

“The illegal aliens that we catch have priors like driving under the influence, domestic violence...those two are like a dime a dozen,” the Border Patrol officer said. The GAO study found that 80% of all arrests occurred in California, Texas and Arizona. California accounted for 58% of the total amount of illegal aliens arrested. And, by 2009, an additional 910,000 illegal aliens had entered the US, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

If you think that getting arrested and deported is a deterrent for illegal immigrants, you are highly mistaken. Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at UC San Diego said, "Even if they are caught, they try again until they are successful," at a congressional hearing on immigration held in San Diego in 2006.
It might not be as hard as you think to get through the American borders either. "Our research shows that 92 to 97 percent of them succeed on the first or second try," Cornelius said.

When asked if after being deported illegal aliens stay out of America, The Border Patrol officer agrees, “No, they’re gonna try again and again until they finally make it.”

Illegal aliens arrested for less serious crimes often don’t show up to their court hearings either. According to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, at the end of fiscal year 2008, there were 557,762 fugitive alien cases left unsolved.


As the Border Patrol officer mentioned, many of the illegal aliens come to America to benefit from programs such as our health care system. California's border counties incurred $79 million in emergency care for illegal aliens, the highest cost in the country according the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, hospitals with emergency rooms are required to treat and stabilize patients with emergency medical needs regardless of whether or not they are in the country legally or whether they are able to pay for the treatment.

The closer the proximity of a hospital to the US border the more susceptible it is to a high rate of illegal aliens seeking medical care. Tony Struthers, hospital administrator for Saddleback Memorial Medical Center San Clemente says, “People can come up here and get care pretty easily from Mexico. The law says you can’t ask, you gotta take care of them. You gotta provide a screening and stabilize that patient. If you don’t we can get fined and lose our license,” says Struthers.

Struthers used to work in Arizona and he fully understands the added strain from states with high illegal immigration rates. “Border states absolutely there’s more of an issue because once again we are required to take care of [illegal aliens]. Of anyone who shows up,” he adds.
FAIR estimated the medical cost of treating illegal immigrants in California in 2004 to be $1.5 billion. Today that figure would be much higher. And it is those people who currently have health insurance that foot the bill.
“We are required to treat them, but the government is not required to pay for them, so the only way we can recover that is to raise our rates higher for those people that do have insurance,” says Struthers.

If you have health insurance and you are treated at a hospital, “You’re paying for those who came before you who didn’t have insurance,” he says. Those who came before you aren’t always American citizens.
For hospitals, rising costs have become an escalating problem. And while hospitals close to US borders see a larger amount of illegal aliens utilizing their facilities Struthers says, “Illegal immigration is just a subset of that bigger problem.”

There are an estimated 822 illegal aliens crossing the US borders on a daily basis according to the Center for Immigration Studies. Many of them are entering America for jobs, some for health services, some to commit crimes and transport drugs, and a few for other reasons. One of those reasons that should be a major concern for US citizens is terrorism.

The Border Patrol officer says, “We don’t only deal with Mexicans. We deal with people from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras. You know, any country, you name it. A lot of ‘em come through Mexico because that’s just the way it works. They get themselves to Mexico and they try to get smuggled north from there.” The only way to know who is crossing the US border illegally is to catch them, bring them to the Border Patrol station and identify them. Open borders mean easy access for those who plan attacks on American soil.

When it comes to terrorism the Border Patrol officer says, “That’s one of our big concerns.” He mentions that ever since 9/11, The Border Patrol has tightened their procedures.

When it comes to our borders, “They are more secure than they were 10 years ago, that’s for damn sure. But It could be better and hopefully it will be better,“ the officer says.

Decreasing the incentives for illegal immigrants to come to America by cracking down on employers who hire them and taking away taxpayer-funded benefits is a good way to reduce the flow of illegal immigration. The Border Patrol officer explains that we need to increase internal checkpoints. He said that once illegal aliens get far enough north, they no longer encounter immigration checkpoints and are home free. He also believes having military at our borders would increase our chances of keeping America and Americans safe. Amnesty, on the other hand, attracts more illegal aliens and more crime.

It is time for the US government to support our Border Patrol officers and tighten our illegal immigration policies in order to provide a safer country for us all. Arizona recently passed a law outlining a more stringent policy when dealing with illegal immigrants. Results from a bipartisan poll by Lake Research Partners and Public Opinion Strategies, conducted for America's Voice, showed that 84% of voters supported the new law while only 12% opposed it. American citizens know that our Border Patrol officers are heroes.

The Border Patrol officer explained that in order for him to stay positive he must refrain from reading the press or watching the news, “It doesn’t seem like the government cares,” he said. He feels as though the media demonizes him and shows him as a “destroyer of dreams.” As a result of the media’s negative attention, he feels as though many citizens whom he works to protect on a daily basis oppose his efforts.

The Border Patrol officer says, “We are spending all this money to keep us safe abroad and forgetting to keep ourselves protected here at home.” Luckily he and his coworkers have been working hard to protect us. Now it is time to support what these heroes are trying to accomplish. They are stopping terrorists, drug dealers, rapists, murderers, and more. The least we can do is thank them.

Jennifer Kendall is a graduate of Arizona State University and preparing to attend the Annenberg School of Communication at USC.

Karaoke on the way has cheered me up!

While Doc was recovering yesterday from a mini binge the night before he was feeling guilty so I was able to take advantage and get him to agree to buy 200 karaoke songs in 2 packs of Country Classics and Christmas Songs. There is nothing like starting early to practice Christmas caroling. Besides I lost my fun Christmas karaoke disc with songs on it like Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer. (I like any song with Grandma in it) I have looked for it for years, but finally decided it was lost forever. The only pack I found on Ace Karaoke with that song included cost $70. I did not think in good conscience I could ask Doc to buy it, but the more disgusted I got, the more I lost any such scruples. To my surprise he agreed. I also said I had to have another 100 song pack with Milk Cow Blues on it which I don't have. I often have the Milk Cow Blues, so I asked him if he would buy that one, too. To my surprise he felt sorry for anyone who has Milk Cow Blues and agreed. This will be dedicated to all the women out there who had to milk cows as a girl and men, too. It just doesn't seem like people keep milk cows like they used to. They have got lazy. Kids don't even know milk comes from cows and sometimes it used to get manure in it, too. Especially when kids were milking.
I became desperate to keep Doc doing anything that might inspire him to give up some of these killing binges of his. Accordingly I resurrected this karaoke video for my blog today we did last Christmas with him still trying to sing a David Allen Coe song and get it right. It was listed on Youtube under David Allen Coe singing his own song with a bunch more wannabees and Doc's actually had 347 hits on it, which is a huge success for him, since some of his slower videos only get about 5 hits.
Today he was made happy by one of his step children actually asking to be friends with him on Facebook. She was one he actually tried to raise for 13 years or so. He did not get to raise his own children so settled for helping raise other people's kids. He claims he did not drink then like he does now.
I found out today by looking at some of her photo albums with Doc that Christine is a swing dancer just like my daughter. She had a bunch of photos on her blog showing her out dancing. Doc claimed she was better looking than my daughter. I said, uh uh, my daughter is very good looking, but so is Christine. I am glad to have Christine back in Doc's life (on Facebook). She never knew who her father was. She was also wearing a red Georgie Girl Cap just like mine! She is still slim and beautiful in her thirties. My daughter Ronda is 41. If she came out to Phoenix my daughter would take her to to her west coast swing dance club!

I am not feeling so cheerful today

For one thing a very drunk Doc called me at 5:30 in the morning to 'git down there.' It seems he had been up most of the night drinking and making a video about his past with his fourth wife whose four daughters he helped raise for about 12 years. Doc can't do anything that causes him to get emotional without drinking. He wanted me to watch the video which was about 40 minutes long he was directing to one of his step daughters. He asked me what I thought and I told him I thought he should not send it to the daughter even should she give him an address because he was drunk when he made it and too mean in regard to his wife, their mother. He is going to think about my advice.
So then I said I needed to make a video because I am still contemplating a long hot summer spent in Phoenix, unable to go north by any means whatsoever to the summer musical festival in Boulder. I hoped to attend this summer since I have not been to Utah for three years, but I decided since I had begun to publish my memoirs on my blog about my early childhood this was not a good time to go. I am sure that some of the women I am trying to educate will not be happy about my memoirs if they have either read them or heard about them. I have already received enough unpleasant comments from relatives and friends about doing this, that I do not think this year or possibly any other year will be a good time to go. It is now even more clear why I could not tell about the molesting for so long and never told the family about the part I thought my father played in it until I was 58 years old, 50 years after the fact. I only did it then because my mother had surfaced a long suppressed memory about my father that half way suggested to her that she had caught him in the act of having sex with a man when she came back unexpectedly to their hotel room when she thought she would be away quite a while. But she was not all the way to this conclusion because she got very upset at my confirming her impression with my own memories and commanded me not to tell this story about my father to anyone else! Even after 50 years. She did not appreciate my efforts to educate her not only about my dad but about the man, an entertainer with a good voice, she was living with I also thought was gay. In fact, he had even admitted he was to two of us daughters, but asked us to promise not to tell her because he said our mother would not be able to 'take it.' Besides she was being very generous to him with her money, so he probably anticipated that would be cut off, too, if she decided not to marry him! We were trying to prevent her marriage to a gay man we also thought was too interested in our children with all our might.
Talk about educating old ladies like my mother about marrying gay men to protect her grand kids! This was what was really going on 50 years later that caused me to tell my mother about my impressions of my father whether she wanted to hear it or not! She lived with the man four years before, thanks to our revelations, she finally sent him on his way! No, not all homosexual men are pedofiles, but those who hide these activities in order to marry are more apt to go in other forbidden directions, too, is my observation. I will also risk getting homosexual men angry by saying this, but I am resigned to making a whole of people angry with my memoirs and having to hide out in another state, because that is apparently going to be the result.

Howdy! Howdy!

Feeling very cheerful today. Had fun putting a new template design on Doc's blog (see Rick n Doc Emde on my blog list) to go with the fun graphic Connie sent him that just matches. She also sent him a profile photo of him on Newsweek as the "Old Geezer of the year." He got a laugh out of that one. He told her how he liked her profile photo on Facebook with her picture on Vogue. You no more than give Connie an idea and she is off and running. Besides that she helps in the huge garden she and her husband have put in on their lovely country grounds in northern Ohio besides the flowers and lots of lawn. See her photos and videos on Connie's Place on my blog list. Of course, my header is by the incomparable Connie.

My sister Ann is blogging regularly so check out her blog KanyonlandKing on my blog list. She has photos of flowers in bloom at her place and quilts galore. Ann is an old quilter from way back so she is always promoting quilting in her family in spite of having retired from quilting a few years ago so she could help write on books like Ranches, Homesteads, and Home. She will soon have another book out she has been working on all winter called the Grand Staircase Monument My Home, something like that.
Raymond is blogging again and he's all excited about staging one of his plays, "Under the Desert" in a little desert place up on Thompson's ledge! Yes! You will have to go by 4-wheel drive to the top. That great event is to take place in August. He has been staging theater events for years, so I know it will live up to promise. Check out Cowboys and Bohemians on my blog list for progress.

The photo is of Thompson's ledge. There is no water up there, so we couldn't imagine anyone building a house up on top, but someone did. Raymond has made friends with him. He says he is a fabulous artist and photographer, also a musician, so that is the kind of guy Raymond is sure to befriend.
Dana Bate of Vagabond Journeys (see blog list) sent all who requested photos of his art work. There is something about someone attempting to express themselves on canvas with paints and pencil that has always fascinated people. I know it does me, and having two sisters who have done a lot of art work, I am always eager to gaze upon any kind of art work. I have been studying Dana's pictures that cause me to think this and that. Dana is a complex man so his art work sort of reflects that. He will send you his art work, too, I am sure if you request it.
Which is also why I have a new blog listed by Herrad called Access Denied--have multiple sclerosis. She and Sherry (Have Myelin?)who writes Word Salads and Postcards from the Edge have taught me a great deal about a difficult disease. They both seemed to be in advanced stages so have multiple problems about which they write very well. Anyway Herrad just posted a tribute to Sherry's Daughter Nicole who suddenly passed from these realms a year ago when she was only 34 years old of an illness affecting her lungs. The tribute is composed of art works from the masters and music videos. Herrad always posts art work or great photos so I know you are going to love her blog, especially if you love art.
I am resting as I am also tired from posting a response to Bill Pasadeaux who has long been my greatest critic. Yes, I have known him quite a few years, ever since I started blogging in fact on AOL. I even posted some photos of him on there when we were semi-friends, but he is a liberal democrat and I cross back and forth voting for who I think makes the most sense. I will not just support the party especially since the Democratic party became the party of pro choice. I have always thought the Democratic party helped minorities the most which was why I registered as a democrat.
I am still busy gathering illegal immigration stories. Another Stand With Arizona rally was held at Bolin Park across from the Capitol in Phoenix yesterday. I will post some videos from it if I like them. I laughed at a poll that was taken pitting our Governor Janet Brewer against Barack Obama in the next presidential election. See I told you we are developing a strong Republican woman candidate in Arizona in Governor Brewer. She may soon pass Sarah Palin as the woman we would like most for our president. Ha. Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State and disappeared!
Politics always fascinates me. Barack will really have to earn the next election as people are still mad at him for pushing through the health care bill with a very strong arm, helped by Pelosi and others, when we are so much in debt and still in a marked recession. Now we have got an environmental disaster in an oil spill that won't quit. I hate to even look at the photos which Ann has listed on her blog Beauty in Art. When I get up the courage I will go and see, but that is so upsetting. Big business has got to do better or it will not get back in the good graces of the American people very soon.

Bill wants to argue with me about legalized abortion again

I am often very lonely at the end of the day and have no one to talk to. So I looked at this comment on my side bar and I thought oh, God has sent me someone to talk to, so I had better not complain because it is Bill. As you know we have every kind of person you can think of in this complex. And I am one for trying to make restitution for all the bad things I think my particular race has done to other races and those with different ethnic backgrounds. If a black man is sitting to the table I think here is a chance to do restitution for slavery and a bunch of other bad stuff, if it is an Indian I know a lot of bad stuff we have done to his people when we were illegals flowing into this country by the thousands and thinking up reasons why we not only needed to put Indian land to better use but why not get rid of the Indians entirely who just weren't going to get over the invasion. We had better weapons. Diseases they weren't immune to.
Now the Jews, I have felt particularly bad about what white even supposedly Christian nations have done to the Jews all too recently in the holocausts. When I was a little child I thought Father Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus really were my ancestors and my people because I heard so much about them in my classes in Church and Seminary. So when the holocaust happened I could not get over Christians turning on Jews. So when I did get a chance to do restitution I was quite taken back at how mean a Jewish guy could be who happened to be Bill. Bill is not his real name. He sounded as brilliant as I expected a Jewish person to be, but was a dreadful skeptic. His favorite book which he kindly lent me to read was Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World". It is now one of my favorite books, too. It had a lot in it about how the Jews were persecuted all down through the ages mainly because they refused to accept Christian versions of Jesus Christ. Many others called heretics were also tortured and burned because they could not please the authorities enough with what they believed. The present holocausts were certainly not the first ones involving the killing of Jews, who have been subjected to many purges.
Well, I was determined to love and accept Bill no matter how he acted. I figured that he had been so embittered by the crimes done to his people that I had to expect some problems with him. But Bill truly tried my soul, however I am still game. I still try to love those who have been sinned against no matter how they act. I believe that only through love will the embittered ever return to the fold, but I must admit it is a tall order to love Bill.
I ground my teeth a little when I read his latest comment which I will post here but after that I will still try to love him according to my philosophy of life.

Bill Pasdeaux said...

What possible business is it of yours whether Sarah Palin decided to terminate or bring her pregnancy to term? I admire the Romper Room Lady who chose, so many ages ago, to avail herself of a safe clinical termination of her pregnancy, which was tainted by exposure to Thalidamide, in Sweden because it was illegal in the US. How many have died, whatever reasons they had, in the aftermath of coat hanger and Oil of Pine torture? You say you're not killing anyone here with your opinions... well, maybe not since Roe vs Wade, or until abortion on demand is fully outlawed by cruel and hypocritical Lawmakers. Allowing choice and making it safely available places the onus of any personal guilt for that choice on the chooser... legislating against the availability of this procedure places the onus of any tragedy to the chooser on the Lawmakers and the constituents who demanded such restriction. Which is closer to the idea of Freedom and Liberty for actual living and thinking Human Beings?

June 12, 2010 4:45 AM

I have to tell Bill that I think the legalizing of the abortionist helps the mother commit a violent act, which is why I think it should be illegal. I don't think we can allow other people to take life with a clear conscience anymore than we can allow parents to abuse and kill their kids after they are born. I think it is just as bad for the humanity of parents to kill their unborn, especially a mother who must undergo what has to be one of the most depressing procedures on earth, with her mind churning about the violence and the finality of the act. Introducing death into the womb where it has not been before can I think have far reaching consequences affecting the life and future well being of the mother, too. The womb shrinks from such a violent invasion, the psyche recoils, everything turns this procedure into a nightmare.
Bill might want women to be left alone to do this if they want to. But the results have been anything but reassuring. More than a million abortions a year in this country alone, which suggests that the more you endorse violence the more people may be tempted to do it. Another reason for restraining them from having the means to do it.
It is just not good for people to have the temptation to commit this violent act reinforced by abortion advocates like Bill, suggesting this is just a harmless procedure and may be the right thing for you to do under your circumstances. I would be willing to put up with a lot of women turned pro choice by legalized abortion screaming and hollering at me that I had taken away their right to choose. I would be willing to sit down with them and patiently tell them my take on the situation, given that I was able to help with the overturning of this law. I would be willing to write books explaining why this ancient taboo against taking the life of the unborn is one not to violate.
Bill could have been the one his mother chose to abort had this law been in effect when he was conceived. My mother did abort her third child by herself with a catheter she got from an aunt. I was her first, but I felt endangered by her act, as she was in an absolute fury at my dad when she did it. My dad was the object of her wrath, but she took it out on the child. He or she had to pay. That might have been the only brother I would have. My mother spanked me throughout early childhood I thought because my dad was too tough and strong for her to whip, and she knew it hurt him for her to whip his little children. I felt her people did not support her, give her good advice, help her with her terrible frustration with her marriage. I came to see that she had good reason to be frustrated with my dad as a husband. She could also have killed herself with the abortion and left us motherless. But her dad was trained to deliver babies so she knew he would come to her rescue if she started bleeding excessively. He saved her life when she nearly bled to death from a miscarriage. He would have done the same with the abortion had she gotten into trouble.
But to my mind, my mother needed to be helped by many around her who were supposed to care for her, her mother and dad and brothers and sisters. Her mother-in-law, her sisters-in-laws and brothers-in-laws. In fact I thought she got more help from my dad's brother than she did from her own family with troubles with my dad. I thought the reasons for my mother's illegal abortion were many, but they all needed to be analyzed and more help forthcoming so she wouldn't be tempted to do it again. She must have gotten some help from many sources, because she had three more children with the circumstances not being much better, but she seemed to have made up her mind that her abortion was a mistake she was not going to repeat.
So instead of just making abortion a way of life, a woman needs to be helped to overcome all the problems that cause her to want to abort a child. Legalizing abortion is only going to add guilt and confusion with an unacceptable solution.
I am sure Bill is not going to be able to accept a loving God into his heart until he is a lot less bitter than he is now. But I do believe he thinks of me as a friend who will reason with him instead of just ignoring him. I think of his bitter comment as a cry for help, because I always know he is in dire straights.
His health is not good so he has difficulty earning money, and his income through disability is too small for him to live within his means. He was evicted from this HUD complex which may mean it will be some years before he is allowed back in one.
I have lived through years of disability so I know how dreary that can be. I am grateful for the subsidized housing which helps me live within my means. I was very sorry to see Bill almost inadvertently do what was going to get him evicted, thinking he was doing a good thing. I heard his justifications many times, but I think he was just too much of a disrupting presence for management to tolerate. I missed him after he was gone as he has a great smile and sense of humor. One of his long suites is being able to read instructions and follow them, but I felt he had to commit himself not being a disruptive presence. No matter what it took.
The only way I can talk to him now or he can talk to me is through my blog. I could reject his comments but I won't do that. I will just try to work with him.
Good heavens, there are thousands of pro choice people whose comments I find to be every bit as corrosive as Bill's. That's what being an abortion protester means to me, is you protest the thinking, and when you get responses, you try to reason with the people, change minds.
A lot of times if you write a protest to a pro choice newspaper, you don't even get the letter published, so you can get comments, but you have to change minds and hearts sometimes one by one. Bill is giving me the opportunity to present my case, and in a blog I am going to do it for the world to read, too, if they choose. Probably not many will read it, but this is my chance to go into what I think effective abortion protesting has to be.
This is more advanced and requires more reasoning power than standing and picketing at an abortion clinic or writing a letter of protest that is not published. I am printing Bill's comment and I am responding. I also put a brief comment after his on that entry, but I thought it also called for a larger response.
So many times in this world we don't acknowledge response even it it is not exactly what we want, even if it is critical and even seems to be nasty, still it is an effort to communicate some of that person's thoughts. He is 25 years younger than I am so he was only about 15 when abortion was legalized. He is an example of a person who has been educated to be pro choice, since he is a liberal democrat, certainly not a conservative republican in any shape or form. He also has to recover from a terrible holocaust of millions of his people. His beloved mother was a concentration camp survivor. His father was a Russian Jew she met in Brooklyn after she came to this country. His father died when he was young. People who don't trust people are bitter. So we have to cut them some slack if we are truly going to do restitution for the violence that was done to them. How can we talk of stemming the violence of legalized abortion if we do not try to stem the violence done to any people for no good reason, other than just for living where they did, having been brought there perhaps years before by distant ancestors. I always think of Jews as being more akin to Jesus who was a Jew so I love them, because I have always loved him.