Once again, let us look at what happened after 1973 when America went pro choice

Before 1973 the intellectuals who had been developed in religious universities were respected and articles by such thinkers as Paul Tillich were even printed on the editorial pages. The activities of such activists as the Berrigan brother priests were reported in the news, even when they headed anti-war protests. One of these protesters, a veteran named John Kerry, a Catholic, even rose in such importance as to become the democratic candidate who ran against George Bush. By that time, he had abandoned his pro life beliefs as did Al Gore, another politician who started his career in politics as pro life but became pro choice to became Clinton's running mate.
Thanks to the legalizing of abortion religious pro life viewpoints disappeared. Reagan, a republican by then, even went pro choice, it was believed, in order to get the support of Hollywood who it was feared might not support a pro life candidate for president.
Instead many columnists from newspapers such as the Boston Globe, Washington Post, New York Times etc were printed regularly who were able to put a positive spin on legalized abortion repeating such successful slogans as, "It is woman's right to choose what to do with her own body." These included powerful women columnists like Maureen Dowd, a New York newspaper columnist, Molly Ivins from Texas and Ellen Goodman writing for the Boston Globe.
In hooking up to national pro life activists this last year more than I ever have, I found out that their view of the media pretty well matched my own. They concurred in the opinion that the press did not support pro life activism. In fact, pro life activists were on their own gathering in Washington to attempt to rally enough pro life congress members to block abortion funding from being included in the Obama-Democratic party health care plan. My own liberal pro choice newspaper, the Arizona Republic, finally grudgingly conceded that for the first time pro life activists were able to make a national impression with their fight against government abortion funding.
The attitude of the pro choice press seems to have been to make it as tough on pro life activists as possible to get favorable press, or indeed publicity at all.
So there has been a dearth of input for years from pro life thinkers printed in the newspapers.
So when a woman like Sarah Palin becomes a pro life activist making speeches on the subject I sit up and take notice. It has been part of her run for president. This is the biggest break the cause has gotten in years, and I intend to make the most of it.
Most Sarah Palin critics do not seem to think more than a million abortion deaths a year is even important. I thought when Reagen was running, and went pro choice, what a disappointment. Al Gore. John Kerry. Ted Kennedy. None of them stayed pro life. All went pro choice. The Bush presidents both put pro life on their platforms but both of their wives, Barbara Bush and Laura Bush have gotten a great deal of publicity by announcing they are pro choice. If those two guys could not even persuade their wives to go pro life, I don't know who else they could influence.
When I hooked up to the 40 Days for Life ministry this fall run by Catholics I developed a great deal of respect for the Catholic priests involved. I respect people of Mormon faith, the church I grew up in, for their strong pro life support, but Mitt Romney waffling on this issue cost him my support and that of many pro life activists. I do not believe that he would make a strong case for life if he were to be the republican presidential candidate.
I don't know if Sarah Palin can make it all the way to a run for president, but right now I think the biggest good she is doing is calling attention to the results of years of legalized abortion in this country and many other countries in the world. This takes guts and a great leap in faith.
I applaud her speeches to pro life groups, her hook ups to pro life political office holders across the land.
Her grasp on historical fact might not be as good as some people's but her grasp on the value of a child's life is extraordinary. As usual, the pro choice people or the ones who just don't care will try to denigrate her intelligence from now on, but I don't think she is going to back down. As long as there are some people in the United States who think what she is saying is valuable, I think she will be out there saying it, just as I will.
I will die saying it. I have been a pro life activist since 1973. I have written volumes of letters of protest on this issue, even when I knew none of them would be published. The newspapers promised they would be read, and I had to settle for years for that. But I did not let abortion propaganda go without protest, not one column if I could help it. I focused on the pro choice media because I felt that they were apt to do the most harm, teaching a one sided view to the young.
The young do not know about the pro life intellectuals who have spent their lives fighting such wrongs as abortion. I have been told by Catholics that some activists in their ranks spend all day long writing protest letters. This is pretty much what I have done, spent hours and hours writing letters and thus honing my thinking about this issue.
Because abortion was so abruptly legalized in my time, it has become my primary work for 35 years. I have worked on other issues but none have required so much effort as legalized abortion. Things changed so drastically when it was legalized. When you are always watching and taking the pulse of the newspaper you notice every change alarming to you.
Abortionists started to get a big play in my newspaper, Planned Parenthood heads, to say nothing of the columnists gone pro choice. Being legal made a big difference. Young people reading these newspapers and being influenced by them, by TV, talk shows, could not know what it was like before. What dismay I felt as civilization as I knew it began to go down the drain. Being pro choice was glamorized, made to seem sophisticated, embraced by Hollywood movie stars, top models, stage actresses, TV stars.
Nobody seemed to miss those activists that protest wars and now had a holocaust of the yet to be born to protest, and could not get publicity one eventually. Pro choice ruled!
Well, activists who really believe that violent solutions are wrong do not go away, they can't, they have to keep doing the work, trying to impress somebody. Because that is how wrongs must be dealt with if we are make any advances in becoming civilized less violent people.
I say less violent because I think there will always be violence. But the less violent we are, the more we can accomplish. I really believe that. The less violent we are the more we can come to a consensus of opinion, the better we can work together.
I say acknowledge the violence in your solutions if you really want to move forward. Quit trying to justify violence. If a law legalizes killing it is bound to be wrong. It is like war. Perpetual war. I don't believe in it, I don't believe war is the best solution and I always work for less war. I don't believe abortion is a good solution and I will always work for the preservation of the child, seeking non violent ways to control child bearing.

Do you belong to the intellectual class or the 'dumbed down ' of America?

First of all you might scroll through this list of books compiled by BBC who believed that dumbing down has occurred and most people would only have read on the average six on the list. I find that hard to believe, since Dan, my sister Ann and I have read up to 80 of them, but we, along with my other two sisters, sons, daughter, nieces, nephews, etc, are big readers.

BBC LIST OF 100 BOOKS

by Gerry Hitt on Sunday, November 28, 2010 at 2:17pm in response to Son Dan's challenge
I read all but 20 of them--Mom I also bolded the ones I have read.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (all) (Dan: Really? Jane Eyre and then Harry Potter??!?) I read the first one...lol (I read one-Mom)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman (Dan: Really?)
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis (Dan: BBC see #33)
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce (Dan: made several valiant attempts...)(made even more valiant attempts)
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo (I read the abridged version- that counts, right?) (Dan: me too)( I read the original-Mom

However, if you have not read many of these books, I most certainly would not sneer at you, but simply regard you as someone who had not been encouraged to read while young as I was. Instead you did other things.
I think this business of sneering at people in public for being dumb is not going to help. And it might make people mad and a lot more apt to come to the defense of those attacked as being idiots such as Sarah Palin, currently. Why people could even elect them to the presidency of the US to prove that getting history wrong is not the worst thing in the world, it is having your heart in the right place that is important.
People wonder how I can be an intellectual and be a pro life activist. I think it is because I am smarter than most intellectuals, I don't run with the crowd. If I think an idea is good or a law is bad, I believe in my own judgment enough to defend the idea, or to try to get the law changed.
Intellectuals like to be popular too and may be guilty of holding opinions that will make their peers accept them instead of wonder if they have gone crazy. My pro life stand has long been associated with my two stays in a psych ward when I was young. I am a religious 'fanatic', unusual for such a book worm.
No, I am an activist. I believe in standing up for my principles. What good would my learning do the world if I did not actively try to change people's minds when I think something wrong is happening.
I am also not afraid to disagree with the most arrogant intellectual in the world, just because I have read a great deal. I am not intimidated by book knowledge. They can be degreed and think they are superior to all in their vast understanding and knowledge of the written word. But most intellectuals may not have been on the front lines I have, risking my life, standing up to psychiatrists, rich fathers, famous Shakespeare directors, college professors, genius students, alcoholic husbands. Once my husband threw a big dictionary at me, and then he held me down with his hand across my throat and said, "Say you are a slut or I will kill you!" I thought it over and decided that was worth dying for, so I said, "No, I won't say it!" He appeared to me to be too tired at that point and now too sober to kill me and let me go.
But that was no different than standing up to 11 psychiatrists and arguing the case for my sanity, and if they got too nasty, just going silent and staring them right in the eye, until they could bring themselves to be more civilized. I knew I could not show fear of them or I might not come out alive. I almost didn't, anyway. Don't think drunk stupid husbands are the only ones who can kill you. Psychiatrists nearly killed me by being determined I was going to have shock treatment. I said no, I did not need it, I was not insane, and they had no right to lock me up and try to force it on me, or scare my mother and dad so bad they would sign for me. I knew very well if I could get out of there and my more insane father could accept I had quit college I would be okay.
I had to go before another board of psychiatrists in another state to get out of another psych ward after I got locked up for trying to help my husband get help. I was not asking he be locked up. I was just asking that he get help before he committed suicide.
I have had to make a lot of tough decisions and so have a lot of other people, even if they have not read more than six books on this list. I look at people for the courage and good sense they show before I try to detect how many books they have read. I know a lot of people who I have come to admire because they are hard working and try to be fair and do the right thing. What do you think?

Raymond called from Texas and said he liked my poem

He thought I should write more poems but I don't see the man who inspired them anymore. He still comes into my mind now and then, telepathically of course. He does not travel any other way. I have found that men are very different and inspire you to do different things. I must have written 75 or so poems when I was seeing this man regularly. We weren't very involved except in a poetic way, but that was lovely.
Raymond has begun his search for ways to support himself in Austin. I think he has to do this actively for a while before things can break for him. It takes concentration to begin to sense where opportunity might lie so you can go there. I think looking for work can be a real workout for our psychic powers. I am going to direct my psychic powers toward Texas to try to help him.
His father and I moved several times to big cities far away trusting to these powers and luck to survive. I remember getting jobs just in the nick of time, but we would have concentrated a lot of nervous energy toward making our big city adventures a success. We had both grown up in small towns, but I had gone away to school so I had experience living in the city. The only time he lived in a city is when he was in the Air Force and I came to live with him after we were married, and we moved to down town Spokane. I remember in order to afford our expenses I found a job at Sears Department store for a while.
Despite our problems when he drank, he and I had some great adventures during our marriage. We, in fact, moved to Los Angeles from southern Utah two different times during our marriage. We also lived in Salt Lake for a couple of years where he had a brother living and I had many relatives. We hardly knew anyone in Los Angeles though, so it took a real act of faith to move there. I am sure this is how Raymond got his nerve to tackle big cities where he has always wanted to try his luck, as after his dad and I were divorced I continued to take him back and forth to live in Los Angeles where he would seize opportunities to act he wouldn't have gotten any where else. All my kids got used to being uprooted to go on the road to a new adventure.
Now my youngest son Dan urges everyone to travel while young. He joined the navy he said to see the world and sailed to an amazing number of countries while he was stationed in Japan.
My mother always wanted to go to exotic places to live and when she divorced my father, she and her new husband moved to Hawaii where neither of them had lived and carved out quite an exotic life for themselves for 20 years on the beautiful island of Maui. So for years we had a Hawaiian mother who paid for all the grandchildren to come and visit her in Hawaii. All the sisters except me went, too. We talked about my trip but for some reason or another we never finalized it. My sons got over there though, some more than once.

So I am thinking of my son in Austin, Texas, to play country western music, an old dream of his he is daring to try to make a reality. I know he will never regret his daring. You have to dare much and risk failing if you are ever to succeed!

P.S. Header, Cowboy Up, by my accomplished friend Connie. Photo is of my Hawaiian mother Irene on the left with some of her many visiting relatives or friends.

Underneath diamonds and a rose

I am going to try to say
nothing that will get me
in more trouble
only you always were an elusive man
communicating by the telepathy channel
so you did not have to own up to it
fantasizing about making love
was what I did
not you
telepathy left no visible tracks
so I can't say you are a liar
now I am in trouble
and must retire to my room
stay out of sight
become a gray ghost
because you are a thief
of the night
who steals into a womans mind
and says sweet things
and laughs and flies
out the window
as though you were
an airplane
from outer space
visible only when
you want to be

gerry

"Faster" another movie where Hollywood glamorizes violence

I wasn't going to review this movie until I saw an even more horrifying news item on the Internet, a truck driver attempted suicide and ended up in the hospital and claims that the three little sons he had with him he left with a woman and told her to take them to their mother. The cops and others are looking frantically for the children, because they know as well as I do that there is a chance that the truck driver father with 'mental issues' killed the three children before attempting to hang himself. And there is no other woman with the children. I am going to dread seeing the next possible horrible twist to this story. If those kids are still alive it will be a miracle.
So I decided to review this movie which our local critic Bill Goodykoontz only gave 3 stars while another reviewer elsewhere gave it 5. I can tell you right now that it did not deserve any five stars, but what disappoints me is that Goodykoontz whose review I read gave it more stars than he did "For Colored Girls" in which two murders played out very like the police suspect happened to these little boys in real life. A mentally ill father in that movie throws his two little kids out a 3 story window while his wife screams and tries vainly to rescue them.
The truth of the matter is that most murders are dreary and ugly beyond bearing almost, and that hardly any happen as they do in "Faster" where murder is made to happen Hollywood style. Almost surely apt to be wholly fictional. And not realistic in the least.
I wrote to Bill about his unenthusiastic review of "For Colored Girls" and told him that Hollywood only adds to the violence in our murderous society by making killing look prettier than it is. A bank robber in this movie vows to go after the men who ambushed him and his gang and took the money they robbed from the bank and killed the whole gang except him who was shot in the head but lived. One of those killed was his brother. So he vows to get out of prison and kill everyone of the them.
Billy Bob Thornton plays a rogue cop gone bad who actually set the gang up and made off with the money, but the guy seeking revenge does not know that. He gets out of prison and starts looking for and killing the gang one by one. Billy Bob becomes alarmed and hires a professional assassin to kill him. On top of that he manages to get assigned to the case so he can make sure he can take him out, too, if he gets a chance.
Well, the would be killer undergoes a reformation of a sort, and spares one guy turned evangelist, but in a showdown he once again escapes death because the rogue cop's bullet hits the steel plate he has in his head from the first attempt to kill him. He rises from the dead and kills the cop after all, so all in all he kills 4 members of the gang, spares one, and kills the cop who set them up, and then he rides off into the sunset to live the rest of his life. He is allowed to live I suppose because the ones he killed 'deserved' to die.
Only in Hollywood would we get a story of murder like this.
I just wish Bill Goodykoontz would come down harder on the gangs in Hollywood that make violent movies for profit with absolutely no redeeming insights into the many real murders we have to live with.
Maybe the murders in "For Colored Girls" were just too disturbing for Bill, but they were a heck of a lot more what goes down about every day somewhere in the U.S. Most killers do not have anything heroic at all in them. They are more apt to kill wives and kids than they are someone coming after them with a gun. And only after they have murdered the innocent do they kill themselves. They would be more heroic if they killed themselves first and let the kids and the wife or the GF live.
But Hollywood keeps making these violent movies because the movie going public likes them. This is what is called selling out. Telling lies about who gets murdered in the US for the most part and making killers attractive. I just wonder why so many men murder and and then kill themselves. Could years of such movies have played a part?
We have Hollywood that reduces killing to thrilling. What kind of message does that send to the young? Killing the innocent is going to cause suicide to follow. Who can live with such dark deeds? Young people need films about murder to be realistic. That is why I count "For Colored Girls" one of the most realistic movies about murder, rape, assault made this year. The criticisms of it were nit picking. Everyone needs to see this movie. A lot more than they need to see "Faster."

Follow up on yesterday's blog before I go to the movies

I feel enough zest to take a walk to the nearest movie theater complex. I think I will see Faster, a new thriller that is out, starring Billy Bob Thornton. It got 5 stars. I will see if I think it deserves them.
After I finished writing about my near murder, I saw on the internet that a beautiful University student from back east had gone home to her parents' house for the holiday and a boyfriend she was trying to break up with killed her, right in her parents' home and tried to hide her body. This happens all too often anywhere in the United States, and I think that women are traditionally expected to hide the violence they have endured from husbands and BFs, so as to make men look good (better than they deserve). Having worried about someone's possible murder my whole life, mostly my own, I am not willing to continue those cover-ups.
I had to work very hard not to be killed during the ten years of my first marriage, and I sacrificed my own safety not to tell my mother about all that was involved in my being molested at 5 for fear she would be murdered. My father did not molest me but he was enough involved that I thought he would kill somebody in his own defensive reaction to the truth.
I saw him act in a threatening manner toward my mother many times during their 35 year marriage. I knew he was stronger than she was, and if it came to a pitched fight he was apt to win it. Heck, he was absolutely ruthless at times in trying to kill himself. I am sure he drank a bottle of rubbing alcohol trying to kill himself not just once but twice during his drinking years! He did threaten to kill himself enough times when I was about 4 that my mother finally told him to take his gun and go out in the orchard and shoot himself where the blood could flow on the ground. For God's sakes, she said, do it! She was tired of hearing about it. I think that was over her falling in love with a handsome young guy she hired to help her make cheese in the cheese factory she and my father had leased. My father continued to manage his father's ranch and wouldn't help her.
I am sure that many such dramas play out all over the United States especially when drinking and drugging is involved. That is one reason I study True Crime, just because so many women are murdered. I felt it was necessary to be extremely careful how I handled my volatile first husband or I would not make it out of that marriage alive. My second husband acted just about as crazy when he was drinking. He would say threatening things, but did not actually lay hands on me to murder me. He once threatened to hit me in the stomach to kill the baby I was carrying, so I told him to leave and I would raise this baby. He did and I did. He caused me so much stress when he was around I did not miss him.
I just did not know what it would take to get along with him, and I was not willing to try to find out. He did ask me to buy him an 18 wheeler with money I had inherited from my father. I turned him down. I told him that I did not like his behavior and expected to have to raise our two kids myself, so I would need my father's inheritance.
Often times people justify not helping young women in trouble with violent BFs by saying and thinking they have brought it on themselves, but the fact is a certain percentage of young men are apt to be violent, apt to abuse substances, and become dangerous. Girlfriends used to complain to me that my oldest son was violent when he drank too much. There was nothing I could do about that, once he had gone on his own and chose to drink. I have always said as much to him as I thought I could, which so far has not caused him to quit drinking. One thing I didn't do is get mad when they complained, and take my son's part. I knew all too well what arguments combined with drinking could cause.
So I just don't think I am going out of my way to talk about unpleasant topics. I have been too affected by violence in my life just to forget about it. I do think these people that occupy their minds with what new gaffe Sarah Palin has committed in her ignorance about history should think about some real crimes for a change, or even about the violence of legalized abortion which liberals still can't seem to see as wrong. I abhor violence of any kind. And I find young intellectual women defending the need for legalized abortion a little unsettling.
I will tell you what I did to my violent first husband after he had nearly murdered me when I was pregnant with my first baby. I told him that I would live with him so he could know his son (also because I did not think I was strong enough then to support him by myself) but I would not allow penetration any more when it came to sex. I was so fragile by then I knew I could not risk having another child right away.
I considered myself nearly to have been murdered in the psych ward when I was 20. Violent husbands aren't the only ones who may end up killing you. I told the psychiatrists that they should not give me electric shock because I had something wrong with me and it might kill me, but they just could not give up the idea of shocking every woman that got incarcerated. I eventually froze from the stress and nearly died, before they could give it to me. I kid you not. I had seen so many scenes of violence by then, I just could not take any more, my body couldn't. Between my dad, other men like him, the molesters, and violent psychiatrists, I was done.
So when I married my first husband I was more fragile than most women, but I did not believe in abortion. I did not believe in violence! My ex husband may have wanted to kill me for it, but sex with no penetration were the terms I laid down when staying with him, after our first son was born. No penetration! My violent dad said when he heard about my method of birth control that it was no wonder I got beat up! Implying he would have beat a wife up too if she had cut him off like that.
I knew that my mother aborted her third child rather than cut him off from no penetration, but I was quite fearless in insisting that my husband abide by this rule. I didn't care if he killed me. I was not going to have a baby when I knew I could not take care of it, and I was not going to abort one either. So my husband never did violate this rule when I said no. In fact, he even acted relieved that we didn't immediately have another baby brought about by his recklessness. He knew he was suicidal and in no shape to be having a second child to take care of, either.
So I say to these women who insist that 'choice' is here to stay and that it is an 'honorable' way out of a pregnancy women can't afford, "Bosh!"
There are ways to keep from having children that are really honorable. Death to the child is not 'honorable'. I would have gone to a nunnery if necessary. Women did go to nunneries to keep from having children they could not take care of. They fled husbands who would have killed them with child birth. This is why nunneries flourished.
For God's sakes, if you can't take care of the children, don't keep having high risk sex and killing the kids. I think that is a lot worse than mistaking North Korea for South Korea. This defense of legalized abortion is to me a great deal more offensive than anything Sarah Palin has ever said or ever will say.
Legalized abortion flourished in communist countries, which may be one reason that socialism has come to have a bad name. But some people now stubbornly cling to the idea that there is nothing wrong with killing as long as it is 'legal'.

Book about death called "Nothing To Be Frightened Of" by Julian Barnes amuses and stimulates

My sister Margie bought this book as her husband is 90 and in a care center now, and she is trying to get ideas on how to handle the end times. She says her husband Floyd called her last night and told her he was ready to come home now, this despite the fact he has to sleep in a bed that restrains him from getting up and falling on the floor. At home enough help can't be kept around to get him back on his feet. Besides there is the fear he will break something and make matters worse. So she had to ignore his pleas when she came to see him. He has actually been very active I think in his eighties, going to basketball games even and cheering for Margie's basketball playing grandsons. He has gone to the homecomings of their Mormon Missions. He has visited with his brothers and his kids who sometimes came daily. She says he has finally begun talking a little about dying since that appears to be what he is doing, but at a leisurely pace.
I am amused by this book Margie bought which is by an English author who is more urbane and intellectual than we are used to our authors being in this country. I am enjoying some of the stories he is telling about the dying writers like Flaubert and Voltaire, and composers like Ravel who was still capable of composing music in his old age but would forget that he had composed the piece and would even ask who had in some instances. Imagine forgetting that you had composed great music. Once they were clapping for him after a piece of his was played and he thought they were clapping for whoever had composed it and he joined in. He thought it was great. He was looking around for the composer.
Julian Barnes discusses a great many ideas about whether we continue to exist, whether God exists, and the truth of religion, in extremely witty fashion.
I have systematically been going through the thrillers down in the little but well stocked library here in this complex. Since so many of these thrillers have been top sellers I decided I needed to know what America was reading. I haven't read thrillers in years, and have run onto some that are quite good. I can zip through most of these in a day. Well they are a far cry from this book I must say, although it has not been tough going it is so entertainingly written. I wish I had this guy for a friend. If he was any closer I would try sending him an e-mail of appreciation.
None of the thrillers have so far inspired me to blog about them, although I might send off one or two of the best ones for Christmas presents.
But I would like to quote what the Boston Globe reviewer says about this book, "Barnes is a writer of impulsive insights, many of them remarkable...of humane irony, antic imagination, and unsettling perceptiveness. He constructs a many-leveled scaffolding of argument, memoir, literary reference, and musings all around the dark pit."
So saying I had a seven hour visit from a spirit the other night. I wonder what Barnes would say about that claim. I usually write what they say down, but I was already tired from writing, so we just talked back and forth without benefit of documentation. This visit was from my first husband's brother who I had called just after I got out of a week in a psych ward where I landed when I tried to help Dean who was threatening to commit suicide. Yes, I got locked up instead. Well, heck, it is a lot easier to lock up the wife than a soldier in the U.S. Air Force who denies he ever said what he did. I could have given them such a good case for his mental illness, so I was extremely incensed that I had been locked up instead. I even had a two month baby at home I had left for what I thought was a possible two hour mission to try to help my troubled husband before I returned home. I was too scared of him to stay. I had had to leave him when I was five months pregnant because he made a very serious attempt to murder me and almost succeeded.
All feeling had ceased after five hours of torture. He had his hands around my throat. I thought I was on my way out. And at the last possible moment a light came down and I could see an angel hovering there and was feeling ecstasy because I was going home. I was remembering Stephan stoned to death with his hands uplifted toward heaven, seeing visions. I was thinking of all people who had been murdered, what they must have seen and felt in their last moments. I know that I must have reflected what I saw in my eyes because my husband suddenly removed his hands from my neck, threw me back on the bed, and said that he would kill me but it would do no good.
I recall having spasms for at least two hours as a reaction to what I had gone through. I felt I was still in great danger of dying. If he tried to stop the spasms, I thought I could still die.
My ex husband was drunk, I thought in a full blown psychotic episode. I never really described this experience to his family. I just did not have the strength. They were too resistant. And my husband would always claim he had no memory of what he did during these violent episodes. Maybe he had a way of deleting the memory. He did appear at times to be in a blackout. He was only 20. Would his family have been willing to believe he was that bad so young?
I doubted it. So I found myself telling his brother the whole story and found that he was very knowledgeable about the alcoholism in his family. He had lived across the street from his alcoholic dad and step mother for years and he had been 8 years old when his mother died. After a breakdown of his own in the service, he had made up his mind to quit drinking and he did, but I did not think my husband was anywhere close to being ready to quit drinking. Despite what his family may have imagined.
I thought they believed he had married the wrong woman. If he had married his high school sweetheart she would have taken him to church, as his brother's wife took him, and he would have quit.
I asked his brother if he thought Dean would have quit that easy. He said no. He said contrary to what they thought I did not drink. I was the daughter of an alcoholic but had vowed never to get a drinking problem, but I just would not have taken him to church. Still I went to church a lot more than he did. He never went to church once that I can remember while we were married.
As a matter of fact after we were divorced he did marry his high school sweatheart and did quit drinking for quite a long time, and attended church. Fine. I was glad that he quit, but I thought his family just used that excuse not to help at all while he was married to me.
His brother said he was sorry that it appeared that way, as he believed that I was a smart woman and that his brother was actually lucky to have had the experience of being married to me! Well, thanks even if he said it in spirit form, I appreciated it.
It felt good finally to have the chance to talk to him about Dean and therefore my sons by Dean, Raymond and Gary, and their drinking problems. We just had a straight talk about what happened back then. He said he was there to help any way he could.
When I really do have a near death experience, I feel compelled to tell what happened, might add to the general knowledge about what occurs when death may be imminent.
My near death experiences led to easier access to spirits. I could also pick up danger in dreams. I scared my kids many times with warning dreams. I am just reporting what happened, make of it what you will.

Doc takes sliver out of my foot

First of all, my header, isn't it cute, made by Connie of course, and reminds me of how I might have looked back in Utah riding a pony in the snow. I would have had my long stockings on, held up by garters, what we wore in those days instead of pants. Pants didn't come until later. I hated having to wear those long stockings, but they were warm! We didn't have any street lights though. We were really out in the wilds.
Now to the sliver. When I went to get pizza I had such a bruise I thought on the bottom of my foot I could hardly walk comfortably. The day before I walked in some gravel, and some of the little rocks had gotten inside my sandal under my foot. (We can wear sandals year around in Phoenix) I thought I must have really bruised my foot by not stopping and making sure all the little rocks were gone. I wasn't going to be able to take a walk until it got better.
When I came back with the pizza I mentioned that I must have really gotten a bad bruise the day before as it hurt to walk. So we discussed why I had walked in gravel, etc. Then he said I will take a look at it after we finish our pizza.
Take a look? What was there to see. Maybe you have got a sliver in there or a piece of glass says he. Oh no, I had dropped a little glass desert dish the day before and it shattered, but mindful of how dangerous a piece of glass in the foot can be and hard to get out, I had swept up the glass and even used a wet paper towel and got up another sliver or two. And for good measure I took the little broom and made a clean sweep again. I get up in the night and go barefoot past my kitchenette to the bathroom two or three times a night, so I didn't want to miss any pieces of glass.
I told Doc that my sister Linda broke a glass once and got a piece she thought in the bottom of her foot and was complaining about not being able to get it out for months! That had been years ago and for all I knew it was still in my sister's poor foot.
I tried to see the bottom of my foot and caught a glimpse of something black where it hurt. Oh my gosh, I said, I do have something in my foot, I can see it! I need a podiatrist, I moaned, I know I can't get at it!
Doc assured me he would look at it. Doc has never looked at any of my slivers before in the five years I have hung out with him! He never even offered to. So he has me stretch out on his bed and I hold up my foot. Oh, he says, I see it, let me get a needle. A needle?? He finds a needle and says see, now I am going to sterilize it just in case with this lighter. He sterilizes it and comes over to operate on my foot.
Are you sure you are not too drunk to do this, I ask, which makes Doc laugh. Even if the joke is at his expense, he will always laugh.
I say now my feet are very sensitive so be careful! I can't stand pain. Oh shut up, says he, stop being such a wimp.
So he pokes around in my foot and I realize old age has caused a considerable drop in my sensitivity as his poking with this big needle hardly hurts at all! He then claims to have gotten something out, but just in case he needs to get his magnifying glass so he can make sure. He looks at my foot with the magnifying glass and pokes some more. He is carrying antibiotic salve which he slathers on. I think he might even have put a band aid on it, but since it was the cheap kind, it must have fallen right off, because I couldn't find it later.
To my shock, my foot immediately feels better. I can walk on it with hardly any pain at all! I think you actually got it out I say.
He says, you think I did not have to get slivers out of the feet of all those stepkids? In my first marriage that six were always having to be doctored for some damn thing. No, I am not a doc for nothing. Doc Emde, that's me.
Yes, I said, you didn't even have to go to medical school. How nice for me.
I go home relieved I don't have to try to find a podiatrist to get that sliver out of my foot. Drunks are good for something! I was thinking later some doctors and even dentists are alcoholics. You never know. They could be half shot and cutting out your appendix. My mind was really wandering. I snapped back to attention and went home to surf the Internet.
This morning I am practically as good as new and will be able to resume walking again. I could just see myself gaining 10 pounds while I waited for appt. to a podiatrist, after I had managed to get through Thanksgiving without overeating. So off to the Farmer's Market I go. But first to Doc's for coffee and half of a banana. And to tell him he has my undying gratitude. Just like the lioness who got the sliver taken out of her paw by a brave good Samaritan, I will purr instead of snarl.

No shopping and pizza for lunch

Doc says he will spring for lunch from Pizza Hut across the street. I only have a limited amount of Christmas shopping I do at Barnes and Noble, so I didn't see any sense of fighting the crowds in November. I will wait until December and I get into the Christmas spirit and then I will go shopping.
My relatives in Utah however all seem to have gone shopping as absolutely no one is posting on the family site, not since yesterday morning early. I am having a tough time thinking of how to entertain myself after my daughter had to cancel an annual family dinner due to illness. I am sure they have not recovered yet.
I went down to Doc's this morning and he was watching the Black Widows network, meaning the women who murder. I told him I did not want to watch any more of that so as to ruin my day, and left.
He and I tried to watch a movie together yesterday since he gets free movies with cable. We chose a movie starring Robert deNiro, but his character was so wholesome, I couldn't stand it. Here Robert neNiro was playing violent killers all his early career and now they have got him playing an unbelievably wholesome elderly man in this movie. I said I don't know any wholesome older men. (Doc is certainly not wholesome) This is so unrealistic I am leaving, Hollywood's idea of what to watch on a family day. Let's not get carried away here with harmless movies on Thanksgiving.
So this morning Doc is watching Women Who Murder. Going to the other extreme.
I have left off watching sports events in my old age. I used to watch football, basketball, and even golf to talk sports with my sons. I decided I did not need to do that anymore. And I am sorry to say I just don't miss sports on TV, but that now makes me so radically different from anyone else. I have a little trouble finding people to do what I want to do, talk about books, life, death, anything with a little depth to it. I am driven to writing to perfect strangers who seem like they might be interested in thinking about those things.
I am reading a blogger now who says he is going to read a lot more this year. He seems to be in his right mind, not an alcoholic or anything. Doc used to read until alcoholism interfered. He can get through the newspaper but he can't concentrate well enough now to get through a book. He believes he is highly intellectual just watching documentaries on the history channel, more so than the rest of the people who live in this complex.
I would make movies with Doc if he weren't so lacking in ideas. If he is the least bit sloppy drunk, I can't make movies with him. He just does not realize what all this drinking for so many years has done to his once fine mind. I am pretty much persuaded that he started drinking too much in his twenties when his first marriage went bad. I think he drank throughout the next three marriages. He was homeless for ten years before I met him, during which time lack of funds probably kept him from drinking. Those were probably his finest years, thinking wise I mean. I did not meet him until his social security had kicked in at 65, and he was pretty much able to stay inebriated all his waking hours again.
He is 74 now, so he has had about nine years of really steady drinking from sun up until bed time. That would take a toll of the highest I.Q. in the world. I have tried to sever this relationship several times, but lack of better BFs drove me back to talking to him again, at least in the morning. He is a pleasant companion at his most sober, for a few hours after he gets up.
I just tried to dump him a while back, but the man I was considering as a possible BF soon proved to be so moody and unreliable I had to forget him. Long distance BFs just don't work. I need one here.
Doc was still a very good looking guy when I first met him. He is looking pretty seedy now days, but he is a tall, slim well built guy you are going to notice if you see him. He talks like a college graduate all right. He is considered smart by anyone who gets very well acquainted with him. But all agree he is an awful drunk. What can I say?
He can play the piano but never does. He has a fine jazz collection and listens to the jazz station practically all the time on cable. He can sing. He used to draw and paint, but doesn't do that any more either.
I can't talk about books with him, because he never reads. I set up a blog for him, but he can't keyboard. When he was working in sales, he used secretaries when he had a job and was making enough money to require one. He has this big computer, but I have to be his secretary or he would never use it. I use it for editing and uploading my videos, and his and mine if we make some.
He acted in all my plays I filmed, but could not memorize so I had to let him improvise the parts which meant he changed the characters considerably from how I conceived them, sometimes even for the better I thought, but mostly for the worse. I had him try to read some scripts, but if he was too drunk he would keep losing his place and would not be able to find it. Sometimes he balked at having to read just my lines, when I forbid him to improvise. He always improvised some. It was impossible to keep him from doing that, but he was the best actor I could find to work with me, with the most capacity to read lines and act.
There is no ideal situation for playwrights my age. Besides that, I don't write plays anymore. I am trying to write my memoirs instead. I have to write about a horrendous childhood and keep convincing myself that this story needs to be told. I was the child of an alcoholic, a pretty smart guy who was a fright to drink. Can I stand to write about all the terrible scenes I witnessed when he would come home drunk and he and my mother would fight all night? I have witnessed him holding a butcher knife to my mother's throat, and so have my younger sisters seen him do that. That's a sight you don't forget real soon. But this would not happen unless my mother got so beside herself she would try to beat him up. It was then that he might grab the nearest weapon to threaten her with. He once grabbed up his rifle with a hair trigger on it and threatened to kill her with it, she said for thirty minutes. I was petrified he was going to end up killing her at last. Before she finally left him after 35 years of battling married life, she said she had to leave because he was trying to lure her out in the desert to kill her. If I could talk to them now I would ask them both, "What were you thinking of?"
There has got to be a hereafter so people like my mother and dad can repent of putting their children through such horrific scenes of violence and do some kind of penance. I would just like to see my dad humble for once and willing to admit to his part in it. When we would try to tell him in his old age, after she left, how he had acted he would shout, "You are a bunch of god damn liars." He did not have any repentance in him!
I would have settled for just what they ask people in AA to do, take responsibility for their past actions and try to make amends for causing so much pain. Some alcoholics, fortunately, sober up enough in this life to express some regrets. My ex husband never admitted to anything he did, either, when he was drunk and trying to kill me. I took that violence for over 10 years just trying to get us to a place where I thought I could take care of the kids and could get away safely. He came so close to killing me a couple of times that my soul started to leave my body. He seemed to sense when I was just about dead, so he could stop just before rigor mortis set in.
You ask me why I married a guy who drank. Well, he was the only one who asked me, and I wanted kids. I figured I would leave him long before my mother ever left my father if I had to. I knew I could never take 35 years of living with a violent alcoholic. Let us face it, folks, if you drink, you are apt to become violent in the heat of arguments. That goes with the territory. Do you know how common drinking is? I at least had taken a vow never to drink. I never saw my mother drunk either. I never drank more than 2 drinks in my life, so as not to become the least bit impaired. When we were out dancing and partying I was sober. He was the one who thought he had to drink to have a good time. I was the one who drove us home afterward. If there is anything I hate it is being imprisoned in a car with a drunk man at the wheel. After a few 100 miles an hour rides of terror with his drinking friends driving us home, I never got in any body else's car either, who might be impaired before the night was over.
At 8 years old, after a harrowing trip home from the dentist with my father at the wheel, I told my mother I was never going anywhere again with the possibility of my dad driving me home drunk. She agreed that was the best policy as she always drove us everywhere once my dad got drunk, when she was along. She just didn't happen to make that 150 mile trip to the dentist. He was supposed to be looking after me. When Mother was driving after he got drunk, he would content himself with passing out in the front seat and then raising up and turning off the lights just to hear us scream I suppose. Guess that was his idea of fun. I never knew. Drunk guys do such horrendous things!
Is it any wonder that I imagine scenarios in the hereafter where I get to confront both my father and my ex husband about their drinking days when I was with them, hoping for more humility on their parts?
And here Doc is just as knot headed as they were, refusing even to consider quitting. He says he got all the religion he could stand going to church all the time in the German Lutheran community in St. Louis where he was raised. He says he hates AA. Well, a lot of drunks won't go to AA. They won't do whatever is necessary to help them quit. Raymond, my second son, thank goodness, is a big believer in AA. He is not resistant to the idea of a higher power, if it will help him stay sober.
I pray my oldest son will try such a program before alcohol kills him. I can just see him actually liking it, as Raymond does, once he got used to it. One of my cousins, who had been a Lt. Colonel in the air force and flew in 300 bombing missions over Germany finally tried AA to quit drinking, and he liked it so well he became one of their top motivational speakers in northern Utah. Unfortunately there are not many AA outreach programs in southern Utah, but my dad was like Doc, he did not like anything that sounded like church. Neither did my ex husband, but after I divorced him, he married his girlfriend in high school and did quit drinking and went to church he said every Sunday for 20 years, until he started drinking again and she had to divorce him.
He drank for quite a long time, and then my son Raymond was instrumental in getting him to sober up, even though he would not go to AA. He would try going to church and finally got so when he quit going to church he didn't start drinking again. But he might not have taken a long walk into the desert had he been part of a program where he had other guys not only helping him to stay sober, but keeping him from falling into a depression. Dean would do these disappearing acts when he got mad and depressed. He was never seen again after that last walk into the desert when he left home mad. That's been five years.
It's too bad that so many wait until is too late to do any reforming in this life. It would be nice if they had a few years of sobriety so the people who put up with their drinking could enjoy them in a different way. Doc just called to say he had to go to Circle K (for a beer run) so to come and get his credit card to go get Pizza. He would buy some diet coke for me to drink.
No thought of reform in his head! Dreary dreary. Well, ta ta, until tomorrow. In the meantime it's the same old same old. I will try to remain philosophical no matter what. I take comfort in writing in my blog and venting at least.

Posting another entry on the good in people, liberals or conservatives

Since my Thanksgiving dinner with family was called off due to sickness (first time I can recall) I decided to write another entry on my blog instead of eating turkey. That will certainly be better for my waistline and my aging mind. My daughter was very apologetic, so I knew it was hard on her to cancel, but I thought she should have done, as four people were sick! I was practically the only well one, and I would undoubtedly have come home exposed.
I was pleased to get a comment this morning from my son Raymond (Bohemian Cowboy) in Texas who said he promptly got sick when he arrived after little sleep for days I am sure. He is still looking for a place to live, but he's happy and optimistic about playing music in Texas. He had already played at an open mike place.
Sister Ann surfaced on the family site, but I doubt if any of the rest of the family will post until after they have had their turkey dinner, if then. Ann left her hometown where it was below zero, and went to her daughter's in St George, Utah which was 30 degrees. She said she went from winter to fall.
There was a bit of a flap on the news featuring a rejoinder from Sarah Palin to Barbara Bush who was quoted as saying she hoped Sarah would stay in Alaska. Sarah Palin responded with a little bit about 'blue bloods', referring to the Bush family and said she should welcome competition from all. Sarah also responded to Michelle Obama's drive to affect childhood obesity, saying we Americans need to be left alone to make our own decisions about what we feed our children.
Well, since we have an obesity epidemic, I am going with what Michelle is doing. I don't think it is going to hurt anyone for her to focus on childhood obesity and what we can do about it, and what is more important might help. I felt Sarah Palin was hard put to think of something to say to please the persickety tea partiers. God forbid a possible republican nominee for president say anything good about the opposition, but since I am not running, I can.
I am after all a registered democrat just because I think this party handles the homosexual issue better and most of the the minority issues. Where I think they went wrong is equating legalized abortion with an 'enlightened' development. Anytime you use violence and bloodshed as a solution, you have gone back to the dark ages, I don't care what it is.
The problem was that legalized abortion came in the back door so to speak over night, which would have required that people protest a law that was now legal. Instead, the media found it a lot easier to find reasons why this law was good, and there were plenty of newly minted abortion advocates ready to tell the world through the media the justifications. Protests became increasingly less valuable to the newspapers in the form of letters, so they gradually cut back to an occasional one printed. Soon all the young people were going to read was just how important legalized abortion was to our survival, until this philosophy of life more or less became gospel, in the press that is.
The Churches finally got their wits about them, after years of this sort of thing, and began to gather their forces to protest the law because they could not have on their consciences the million and more deaths a year of the yet to be born without doing anything about it. The Catholic church which has been fighting abortion since the third century has developed some of the strongest protesters. Their pro life activists have certainly inspired me this past year with such ministries as 40 Days to Life. They were very active when the democrats were trying to pass a health care plan to include abortion funding. Without their numbers of pro life activists I don't think this protest would have been near as effective.
The Mormon church is recognizing that they can't just try to keep abortion numbers low in Utah, but must address the problem as it affects the whole nation. I know they have always taught a strong doctrine against it, but they have not acted nationally as well yet as the Catholics.
I think our nation is served best by all the citizens trying as best they can to support the president who wins. It is certainly not going to help our country to be carrying on all the time the president is in power as a sore loser. I can say that I think some of our loudest most disagreeable republican citizens qualify as sore losers.
I could only wish President Obama the best as he took over the reins of power, even when I still disagree completely with his stand on the issue of abortion. The law was legalized in 1973. I don't agree with it, but I will not go beyond a certain point in attacking those who believe in the law, even when I think it is responsible for so many deaths. President Obama is young enough to have been affected by it becoming the law of the law. So have members in my family. This issue has been one of the most divisive ever, pitting sister against sister, parent against child. That's what you get when you make legal something that is basically wrong. It has been necessary to cheapen the value of the fetus in order to legalize abortion. You can't have it both ways. This tended to cheapen the lives of all children, and that is the troubling message being sent to them by legalized abortion. Children now have to wonder how close they came to being thought expendable. Their survival is a lot more of a crap shoot now, a thought that is not going to make any child too happy, even though they have grown up with legalized abortion.
This country operated for a long time with legalized slavery. That made many people uneasy. Many thought it was wrong, but it was going to be extremely difficult to outlaw it, it had become so deeply embedded in the lives of slave owners who thought the country could not progress and prosper without it.
I foresee a huge struggle to outlaw abortion in our future, but if we are to get back on track, it is going to have to be done.
Until then we need to do the best we can with what we have. I will always vote for the pro life candidate because I think they are going to have more depth in their thinking about what is good for the country. That's why I support Sarah Palin for president even though I do not think she will be as well informed about other issues as some candidates, including Obama.
The pessimists who believe that we cannot get along without legalized abortion do not value each individual life enough, in my opinion. Thailand was recently in the headlines for surfacing a number of aborted fetuses in a Buddist temple in white plastic sacks. Often it was not reported that Thailand is one of the few countries still left standing that has not legalized abortion, so these plastic wrapped fetuses are a mere pittance in comparison to the numbers of the unborn aborted every year in this country and in other 'civilized' countries in the world. These are no longer news. These fetuses are sent to landfills in our country as garbage. None of them ever gets anywhere near a temple.
As far as I am concerned a second term is Obama's to lose. I think a great number of pro choice democrats are committed to legalized abortion, and that just might doom his chances to be re-elected. I think that this issue more than any other one will decide the outcome of the next election. Sarah Palin is doing a great deal to bring that issue to the forefront, because she, too, I am sure has a good idea that this is the Achilles heel of the democratic party, the great weakness in the party today. Right is not on their side when it comes to legalized abortion. Laws can be wrong. The democratic party ought to know that with their admirable history in fighting for civil rights for minorities. The democratic party should know how hard it is to champion what is right regardless of how people are used to doing it.
Now the republican party must champion Life. Because churches are traditionally conservative, this issue has fallen into their hands.
The democratic party has found itself championing the separation of church and state. A much bigger support of the secular. A stronger opinion that religion is bunk. It is easy to see how the party members fell into the traps of wrong thinking associated with the left. That might be communism to you, which began with an ideal and all too often ended with murder.
The ideals of communism have affected many a liberal, and suddenly the liberals had to defend abortion legalized over night by a leftist leaning Supreme Court, starting with an ideal and ending with murder. The trap was sprung. Murder was now legal. As they say it takes the breaking of the eggs to make an omelet. but the end justifies the means. Legalized abortion is now necessary to keep society healthy and functioning.
Liberals tend to think they can't be wrong. They trust their intellectual gifts too much, and fail to look the more unpleasant facts in the face. I have been very disheartened and disillusioned by how intellectuals have accepted legalized abortion with hardly even a protest. And still act as though they are completely superior, the elite thinkers of our society. University professors. Published writers.
Life in the US was not the same after 1973. Nearly two million abortions after it was legalized made it completely different. I can't believe how many intellectuals have failed to register these deaths as anything amiss.
So now I am saying that brilliant people need more than brilliance to be trusted. Why is Sarah Palin considered such a dummy, when she can understand that legalized abortion has to be stopped and why. I would say that in her own way she is brilliant under fire, and she also has the courage of her convictions. She will not back down.
She restores my faith in the simple goodness of some people that not even politics can corrupt.

I love social networking when it puts me in touch with my kids and grandkids, other friends, and relatives on a Thanksgiving morn

It's six AM and I am up early thinking to write an early blog entry before I get dressed and go down to Doc's for coffee and reading the paper. My daughter Ronda will be here at 9:30 to pick me up to go to her house. When I went on Facebook before writing on my blog I saw that my sons, Gary and Raymond had both posted for Thanksgiving as well as my granddaughter, Laura. Raymond is in Texas and Laura is in Flagstaff. My nephew Scott had posted some glorious photos he had taken in Sedona and the Monument Valley. He is also staying part time to my son Gary's house, so he had posted a good new photo of him. What a treat. My other granddaughter Kelly Anne I noticed later had an entry. Dad Gary was wishing his daughters Kelly Anne and Laura a Happy Thanksgiving. I was touched a couple days ago to find that Kelly Anne's son Travis, and my great grandson, was old enough to go on Facebook and he was commenting on a photo of his mom, saying, "U are beautiful, Mom."
My niece Cheryl had posted since I was on there last night and throughout the day I expect to see more Utah relatives posting. This is fun! When you just can't see everybody on a holiday because they live in different states!
Today I expect to see my grandsons Jamal and Ethan. I must take my camera and get new pictures of them. I am thinking maybe I will take some of Ethan outside as it is so beautiful out where he lives. The last time I was out there we took Bailey, the family dog, for a walk out to the edge of the pristine desert. There is no desert terrain more beautiful than Arizona saguaro country, which is lush compared to some deserts. I never get tired of looking at it.
My son Dan will be picked up by Ronda as well so he won't have to ride his motor cycle 40 miles north. My grandson Dante has been here visiting him, but Ronda said his mom's Thanksgiving is too close to ours so he needed to go to it. I was hoping to get him over here so I can make a video with him. Maybe before he leaves! I will be talking to Dan about it today. Dante and I have not made a video since he moved to California to go to high school. He is staying with an aunt and uncle who live in the Lucerne Valley, close to Los Angeles. Dante is going to be a well traveled young man by the time he is 18, but his dad joined the navy to see the world, and always advises people to travel all they can when they are young, including his son.
Doc will be staying home. Drinking confines him to a very small world at his age. He can only be his better self now when in his relatively tiny apartment. He starts showing signs of brain damage when he has to adjust to very much. He will have to be content with a Thanksgiving plate my daughter will send to him.
My sister Linda just got back on line after she had to make a traumatic move from her apartment in San Francisco because she got allergic to something in it, she thinks mold or a gas leak, maybe both. Finding another apartment close by her daughter's in San Francisco was not easy, then moving took time. She came on the family site last night saying she had finally got hooked back up to the Internet! Hooray! We need our social networking now to feel connected enough.
I will be reading blogs, checking out what my blogging friends are doing for the holidays, see what photos they took, and in general making a holiday run on the Internet, but not until after I get back from my daughter's. Goodbye now, I am on my way to my first stop at Doc's. I promised an early visit this morning since I will be gone all day. Photos later on this evening!

P.S. Ronda had called Doc's while I was over to the Circle K buying a paper, banana, etc. I called her back to hear that she, Chad, and Ethan were all sick with a cold and had been up most of the night with Ethan. Dan also called Ronda at 2 AM and said he was sick with a fever and didn't think he should come to the dinner. So quite sensibly she decided they all needed to recover and have dinner at some future date. I didn't want to go encounter 2 different germs. Thank goodness, Chad and Ronda are off for the holidays so they can all get better before going back to work and school on Monday. Doc and I have plenty of food. I am trying to cut down on delicious meals more all the time. So I am always happy for a good excuse not to eat one!

I was relieved when Jennifer Grey won over Bristol Palin on "Dancing with the Stars"

I decided after I had come out supporting Sarah Palin for president, I had better watch the final of "Dancing with the Stars," because some indignant liberals were talking like Sarah Palin had already tied up the championship for her amateur dancing daughter Bristol with her hordes of supporters poised to call in. I watched for myself and saw that the beauteous Bristol had a lot of appeal going for her despite the fact she was not a gifted dancer. She was like Jewel's bull riding champion contestant in a previous year, who kept getting voted back on by his fans no matter the efforts of his competition. He had a winning personality and he was funny as well as very strong and physical from his bull riding and cowboy expertise.
I read this morning that Jennifer Grey ruptured a disc in her back Monday, but went on to dance a beautiful Viennese waltz with her partner Dennis Hough last night to take the prize. I also love Lacey Schwimmer who was a fantastic partner for Kyle Massey. But my gosh, he didn't have much of an edge over Bristol who is so young but managed to dance with a quality that tugged at your heart. She was youth out there with all its appeal, coming up to the challenge of dancing on national television in quite amazing fashion. She had to make a giant leap to look as good out there as she did.
I know that many thought she had unfairly knocked out Brandy, but I just don't think Brandy's fan base was as big as Bristol's. That was not Bristol's fault. Brandy has been in the limelight for years, while Bristol has just been there only two short years. I think people started rooting for Bristol when they saw how game she was.
I wish when people lose on this show they would not be so quick to holler foul. Russian Maks, Brandy's partner, is a fantastic dancer, but his arrogance has not endeared him to some people. He should not assume that just being his partner should guarantee a win if you are half way good at all. I thought Brandy was great, but she did not have youth and such a newness to the world of the celebrity as Bristol.
Well, America has really taken Bristol into their hearts now, the ones who watch "Dancing with the Stars". And they don't do that unless there is something about that person that appeals.
So putting the dancing controversy to rest, I say, "Happy Thanksgiving" to everyone. Connie made my header and I have just been waiting to put it up. Today is the day. Tomorrow we go eat turkey.
I will be going to my dancing daughter's house and we will have fun discussing all the fine points of the dance. Lacey Schwimmer is a west coast swing dancer as my daughter Ronda has been for over fifteen years. She loves Lacey and her brother Benji Schwimmer who won the championship a few years ago on another great dance show, "So You Think You Can Dance?" Ronda is an advanced west coast swing dancer now and competes in every competition she can. I just read on FB that she was going to a Palm Springs competition in January. I used to love to dance but was never as good as my daughter. My sisters and I used to go to every dance we could.
I knew Ronda was going to be a dancer because when she heard music in her crib, she would dance the whole time it was on. Her favorite thing to do at five years old was to go somewhere a live band was playing, and she would dance as well as most adults by my table. In fact, people would see her and come and ask her to dance. I would not let them dance with her in places where liquor was being served, but back in Utah, I remember one night, in a long red dress, she was belle of the ball. A man asked her to dance and was so delighted with her dancing energy he kept her out there dancing until everybody had noticed her.
So I am not really surprised that dancing is her passion, but nursing is her job. Dancing is just what she does in her spare time. Her husband Chad who claims to have two left feet golfs in his free time.
I love to go to her dancing club and see so many slim ladies like she is keeping in shape year after year with their love of dancing.

I support Sarah Palin for president!

Have been thinking all day about writing another entry defending Sarah Palin

http://www.conservatives4palin.com/2010/11/10-qualifications-sarah-palin-has-over.html

Here is a link to an article in which the author lists 10 ways Sarah Palin's qualifications for president stack up favorably with past nominees and other possibles. Pay special attention to her record on pro life activism. It would be hard for any other nominee I can think of to match her record here. In fact I am going to copy this qualification for you because I think it is important.

"3. Two years pro-life advocacy.

Barack Obama famously gave a speech to an anti-war rally in Chicago in 2002 that put him on a breakneck path toward the presidency. The anti-war stance he articulated that day as a state legislator differentiated him in a key way from primary opponents who, as actual members of the U.S. Senate at the time, had voted to authorize what later became an overwhelmingly unpopular war with Iraq.

Palin gave a similar career-defining, path-altering speech to a pro-life group in Evansville, Ind., in April of 2009. Already a pro-life heroine since giving birth to her two-year-old son, Trig, Palin's emotional speech in Evansville that April day signaled her transformation from a regional phenomenon and vice presidential candidate into a national conservative powerhouse (although some would argue that moment occurred when she delivered her flawless convention speech on Sept. 3, 2008). Since that day in Evansville, and after reluctantly resigning the governorship several months later, Palin has delivered more than 100 inspiring speeches across the country, many of them to pro-life groups. This dedicated advocacy the past two years compliments her decades-long support for the life issue.

Why is pro-life advocacy a qualification to be president? Because a majority of Americans are, in fact, pro-life. So many of us are actually mortified by the reality that Obamacare will provide federal funds for abortion -- despite assurances that it would not. Traditional swing states such as Maine, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio have just elected pro-life governors in 2010. And while we have elected pro-life presidents before, Palin reflects our values in a manner not seen before in a major female politician. Should she run, Palin's common sense, pro-life position would stand in contrast to GOP primary opponents who have shown a willingness to flip-flop on the life issue depending on their audience. Moreover, her compassionate and humane position on abortion would stand in stark opposition to the extremist record of our current president who voted four times to deny care to babies born in botched abortions -- the only member of the Illinois legislature to do so.

Indeed, to this perennially divisive “wedge” issue, Palin brings unique character, conviction and wisdom. As the youngest and first female governor of a male-dominant state, she possesses the potential to inspire women of all political backgrounds to consider childbirth as an empowering act. Perhaps unlike any politician before her, Palin bears witness every day that an unexpected child -- even in the midst of a fulfilling and challenging career -- can bring unimaginable joy."

This record is remarkable considering how many liberals just ignore this issue and think nothing of it. You would think from most of their attitudes we were still back in the days before 1973 and we all took for granted that not a lot of babies yet to be born were being killed in illegal abortions. When abortion was legalized by the Supreme Court an astronomical amount of babies were killed, up to nearly 2 million a year in the first few years. Over a million a year have continued to be killed in this country every year since. A third of the children conceived since 1973 have been killed in legalized abortion.
But the press having accepted its legality hardly registered these grim facts except for throwing more abortion advocate columns at us, with their writers trying to explain patiently why such a brutal policy was necessary, should we wonder. We were getting the message that we readers and citizens should not worry our heads about the sudden rise in numbers to unbelievable heights.
It has taken a long time for enough people to worry about it to begin to support the people who think this is way too many and that we need to pay a lot more attention to this issue than we have been doing.
Sarah Palin is amazingly one of those people who has her head screwed on right, in my opinion, when it comes to dealing with over a million dead in legalized abortion every year, maybe because she has had five children, including a Downs Syndrome baby named Trig who has been photographed with her on some of her recent trips across the land to speak to the people about this issue and others.
We hardly expect men to put the same emphasis on this issue as women do, which is why I think a woman pro life activist politician is so important to the cause.
I have been a pro life activist since abortion was legalized. I never believed in abortion, and I was not going to start just because the Supreme Court for some reason known only to them saw their way clear to legalize abortion across this land, thus raising the number of deaths the very first year to unheard of numbers. Actually abortion advocates even began lying about just how many 'back alley abortions' were being performed which called for this radical reform according to them.
Well, we had China and Russia as good examples. They had to get brutal in order to control their populations, in fact they were also known for killing a whole bunch of citizens, too, in their efforts to control the people and keep their regimes securely in power. I am a big history buff. I read and read trying to understand what was going on in many countries at critical times in their histories.
I don't know how any body can understand history without reading a whole lot of it.
But I think there has been a deliberate muting of the facts by the liberal pro choice media just so they, one by one, do not have to take a costly stand against a law that is legal.
I immediately began paying a high price for being pro life. In the theater world I was like the lone objector. Why, because suddenly pro life playwrights became fanatics as they are still pretty much considered to be today. My plays were suddenly the work of an extremist. I was too 'religious'. All the plays I had done on my married bisexual issue were discredited before I could even get a following for them, I suppose because I had the nerve to accuse my father of being dishonest to my mother because he concealed his homosexual activities and forced me to keep quiet about them, too, even though I had been molested by a man I thought he was having an affair with. Molested at 5 and I am a fanatic for expecting a little bit more of my dad than exposure to a man he hardly knew and brought too close to his children so he could abduct me when I was only five, three times before I could get my wits about me and figure out how to stop him without telling my mother the whole story, thus possibly causing her murder as well as the sure murder of the abductor. As it was, I did surface the story three years later, but not to my dad. The abductor was shot, but not killed. So my father did not end up with murder on his conscience as well as many infidelities in my opinion.
You can see my play Daughters of the Shadow Men on You Tube and judge for yourself whether this is play that should be seen. Because many women are so suppressed this is one area where lack of observing powers and education is going to cause them not to see the obvious. My mother read. She was quite aware, but she was not informed enough on the subject of homosexuality to figure out my dad, in my opinion. I had the knowledge foisted on me, because my dad thought I was too little to pay attention. I was extremely observant of everything he did. And was also gifted with powers of deduction my mother did not have.
I had to conclude that the theater world just was not ready to support playwrights who could write about these issues, especially women.
I never abandoned my father. I knew he came into the marriage already shaped and formed, so could not keep from violating the promises he had made to my mother. But he still had the obligation to figure out how to be honest in this life, which he hardly succeeded in doing. Instead he bullied his wife and daughters unmercifully whenever we got too close to accusing him. He never knew all the damage his infidelities did to me and my sisters as well as to my mother. But I kept on trying to get him to the point that he would be accountable, even though he died before we made much progress. I never even got to talk to him about what happened in the psych ward. He would start screaming when I even brought subject up.
Well, it looks very much like I am going to die before I ever see that play produced, because the theater world is not yet ready for plays that speak the truth about certain issues.
We have a long ways to go still in allowing women to write the truth about the unfairness they are subjected to in marriage, and the violence.
Abortion was just one of my issues. Domestic violence and infidelity were others. Child molestation another.
Tough issues, but partial success was not what I wanted and would settle for. I wanted my writing about tough issues to be recognized as needed and necessary. No compromising. What I lived and understood I thought I should be able to write about and have accepted, but that was not the case.
There are too many people in this country with the power to suppress concern about tough issues. We have had people suppressing concern about the deaths of far too many unborn children. Oh, I know children on welfare have dropped. The government is not taking care of as many children. They don't have to take care of them if they are killed, so why protest? So we have the idea promoted that a child is going to be happier killed than living a sad miserable life on welfare and in poverty. How easy to judge. How easy so many people have found it to justify killing.
As I have said before, the dark power to kill can become addicting. Then you really have a job to try to stop people from using this method to solve society's problems.
You have got to be extremely tough to stand up to these kinds of thinkers, because they are brutal. Sarah Palin has got youth on her side and the mental toughness that has given her that kind of nerve and conviction.
No matter what else she does not know about, the power she is exhibiting to stand up to the bullies of pro choice is impressive. If she can stand up to them, I believe that she can not only lead, but she can inspire! Something no pro choice candidate can really do, and that includes Obama and Hilary Clinton. Many democrats have caved in to demands they be pro choice. What they don't understand is that their support of pro choice may have doomed this presidency.
I shuddered when I read that Obama voted three times in his early political career not to help a child who had somehow survived a botched abortion. His reasoning was that the mother had made the decision that this child should die so nothing should be done to save it. How in the world could this kind of thinking inspire people? He has been taught to think like that by the philosophies of 35 years of legalized abortion with its justifications. He has to be converted now to a less violent way.

Ronda remembers Thanksgiving invitation, Pierre comes to talk about hereafter, and gone, bed bugs

When my daughter Ronda called me on the way to dance, she remembered she had not mentioned Thanksgiving which of course she and Chad are doing, only this time, these busy people are ordering Thanksgiving, thank goodness. Last year, they were both tired from working and I felt sorry for them cooking a huge dinner. Gary is not coming so I left her that message later, as she is ordering the food tomorrow.

Later I got up to read a post my sister Margie put up about her husband who is in a care center now declining at the age of 90. After a lot of thinking about it, I spoke to Pierre as I spent a year taking him to doctors and watching him decline of what turned out to be lung cancer. I wondered if I was up to taking care of him at home with the help of hospice. If my strength failed then he would have had to go into hospice. Margie brought Floyd home once but they could not keep him off the floor. They would just get him up and he would get up out of bed and fall down again! It took a man to lift him, so Margie called for them to come and take him back to the care center.
Pierre came quickly as he remembered that Margie was very kind when he was dying and sent $200 dollars to defray expenses. We had to pay off a debt that month Pierre owed the bank, so that helped us get through his last month without me having to borrow money. Others contributed enough for his cremation. He got a kick out of my daughter shopping around for a bargain after he tried to sell his ashes to his ex wife if she would send him $700 to pay for them. I warned him I doubted if he was worth that. Pierre and I joked a lot like Doc and I do, no matter the subject. His ex wife called after I notified her he had passed and said she still wanted his ashes. I made her wait a year while I thought it over, but since he did not like Arizona I decided to send them to California where she was. I know he would not be happy with his ashes scattered among the Saguaro.

PIERRE: Oh, I did not care where my ashes went at that point.
GERRY: Oh, here is Pierre. I thought I would give you an introduction but there you have popped in.
PIERRE: I told Gerry that you sort of have to make a reservation for your flight to the hereafter just like you do on an airplane. All of you would do well to do some research into what might lie ahead so you will be more comfortable on your flight and won't be so anxious about suddenly dropping off into oblivion. We do get people all the time who have spaced out on the flight, surrendered to oblivion. Then we have to try to get them to come back. Our idea now is to pay visits to the sick before hand, maybe even years before to try to prevent some of these profoundly black mental states on arrival.
GERRY: Hmm, would those be atheists?
PIERRE: Anybody can turn atheist at any given moment. All their beliefs in heaven can simply evaporate.
GERRY: My neighbor just died. We have been expecting it.
PIERRE: Ron arrived in relatively good shape despite his weight.
GERRY: He would always say he was a man of God. But I wanted that woman standing on the stairway to heaven to represent my sister Margie who is Floyd's slim little nurse. She said she finally told him today that he was dying and what was he thinking about? He said he was trying not to think. She asked him if he did not want to see his mother and dad, and he said, no! She has spent hours and days and years looking after him so I suppose she thought to have a conversation with him if she could about it. It was probably impossible for her to remain silent about impending death any longer.
PIERRE: If he is 90 and declining he has got to know a change is coming. I am sure her being a long time nurse, she would take more risks than most in what she might say to him.
GERRY: She has been studying books about death and dying. Then too a tragedy occurred. Floyd's nephew died from a hunting accident. His horse fell on him. His funeral was just Saturday. He was only 50 years old, so I am sure that had a very unsettling effect on Floyd. His brother had been a constant visitor until his son died, just when they thought he was recovering.
PIERRE: Floyd is probably on stand by until he and his brother recover some from this death. There can be delays in takeoff from accidents like this. Floyd is now probably trying to hold on until he thinks the family has recovered enough to take his death, too, which will be a lot less traumatic since he is old.
GERRY: He did not smoke or drink and he's got a pacemaker. Seems like those things keep a person going even if the rest of them has deteriorated, including their minds.
PIERRE: That is called a pacemaker death. But they save lives for years. They are worth it. Tell your sister Margie not to worry, Floyd is actually doing well with his departing. Things are on schedule and going as expected.
GERRY: Hmm, she might be glad to hear that.
PIERRE: It will be over soon. The big ship is coming in. The veil is opening to allow pickup.
GERRY: Floyd's dying has not been tragic at all. He fought through ten by pass surgeries to live, so he is a very tough man. He loved life.
PIERRE: The more you love life the better. That love of life will carry you through to eternal life, just because you enjoyed life too much to want it to end, so you will do all you can to build your eternal life when it becomes necessary.
GERRY: Goodbye Pierre.

I can't believe I scheduled a talk about bed bugs here.
Well, the bed bugs in this complex will soon be gone because the generous owner and management have inspected every apartment, some twice and are vigorously treating the infested ones with a heat treatment. They have left tapes under the beds to catch any strays. I read today many all over the world are suffering from bed bugs. Even the State Empire building in New York got infested. One man said his daughters' apartment got so bad they just finally ran from them to save being bit to death, and when people find you have them, you get dropped!
I just found out tonight that DDT and another powerful insecticide were banned, so that is why they have gotten so far out of hand. I wondered how our mother killed ours when I was little. Yes, we got 'em then. She was in love with DDT when it came out and blasted everything with it. It is a wonder we are still alive.

Back to Arizona business as usual: Doc's video "St. Louis man gets rhinestoned, electrocuted and cowboyed in Arizona" and "St Louis man deserted-"

I got so hyper while Raymond was here I have been busy catching up on the sleep I lost. I haven't even been able to pick out a header, but I love holiday time. It's not quite time yet for Christmas headers, but Thanksgiving is so up in the air don't know when I will celebrate that or how. We usually all go out to Ronda's, her brothers and I, but she hasn't called so she may have plans just to ignore Thanksgiving this year. If so I will take my cue from her and grab a piece of turkey from somewhere. Doc will probably go find something to feast on, he usually does, although Ronda has been real good to send him plates. My son Dan will be figuring out things to do with his visiting son Dante.
I was busy down to Doc's editing videos he insisted on making for his channel, where we talk about his compulsive need to act for me when he thinks I don't have sense enough to run his camera properly. He did not trust me to push the low light button on the video camera so he pushed it for me before I left. He told me he had pushed it and I said, won't that draw juice from the camera? He said not unless it is turned on. I think he was wrong! It drew so much juice from the camera it wouldn't even turn on and film. It just tried to. I finally had to change that battery to the low performing extra one I had along. It only provided enough juice to film for 7 minutes!
So we had to discuss that boo boo on a video until I ran out of patience. When I get to that stage I just leave rather than hurt the man. I have never been a husband or BF beater. Although I can certainly understand the women who are. However, I might point out it is a dangerous indulgence because men are usually bigger and stronger no matter how they seem to have deteriorated, and the women end up hurt the worst even if they struck the first blow.

The worst outcome is that I have tried for a long time to get my son to let me film him, and when he gives me the chance I show up with an impaired camera! I did tell Raymond I was going to purchase a new battery myself if I had to, so I hope he will give me other chances to film him. I know I am pretty old to become a great camera person, but he probably won't be staying long in Phoenix from now on, so I can at least film him when he is here.
I love filming people. Daniel, my neighbor, who has promised me that he will let me film his greatly decorated apartment as I did last year for Christmas, told me he has started already! Linda with the permanent trake has been practicing her Christmas songs. She is also a great decorator so I hope to film the songs in her apartment.
Doc has been feeling ashamed of himself for not singing more when he can carry a tune, so we may get out the karaoke machine again and attempt to go there with my new batch of karaoke Christmas songs.
So who knows, my world may come alive again with music, and then again it may not. I have learned not to count on anything. I am trying to take life just as it comes.