"Last Station" triumph for Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer playing last days of battling old couple

I loved this movie. Helen Mirren is so good in it, playing Sophia Tolstoy. And so is Christopher Plummer playing Leo Tolstoy, the famous Russian author of "War and Peace," "Anna Karenina" and other great masterpieces. Helen Mirren is really good at throwing Sophia fits as some of his powerful followers scheme to get Tolstoy to make a new will to bequeath the income from his writings to a Tolstoy foundation. They finally get him out in the woods to sign and then he hastily leaves the estate so as not to deal with Sophia's reaction who is so upset at him willing away the income of his works. After all, she wrote out the copy of War and Peace three times as his secretary. That should have earned her a goodly sum.
In the end we are sympathetic to Sophia as Tolstoy falls ill after he has parted from Sophia who is as good a nurse as she is shrewish wife. The man who has schemed for his income to benefit the people denies her the opportunity to see Tolstoy in his last hours. Sophia has tried to drown herself after she finds out he has left her. She finally finds out where he is and goes to see him. Once he is thought to have breathed his last so he can't change his will she is allowed to say good-bye. He does rally enough to know she is there.
After his death the Russian senate returns the copywright of his works and therefore his income to Sophia who lives another five years. So she is vindicated for her many years of devotion to him, despite her fiery temper when she believes he has fallen under the influence of greedy charlatans who have taken advantage of an old man feeling guilty because of the worldly goods he has accumulated from his writings. I think he deserved about anything he got for writing such a monumental works as War and Peace.
Doc got so engrossed in this film he was even watching the scenes that had been left out. Helen Mirren is one of our most distinguished senior actresses. She shows in this film that age does not limit a good actress. She gives as spirited and energetic a performance as she has ever done. I salute her!

I survived 114 degrees in Phoenix just barely!

The 4th of July weekend started off Friday with a scorching temperature of 114 degrees! People were complaining of nausea, weakness and general malaise. The air conditioning broke down in another Phoenix apartment complex (not ours, thank heavens) and people were in danger. I would have had to evacuate because I could not have survived a heat wave with no air conditioning. As it was I cooled off in our big pool. I even had to sit in the sun a little bit after I got out to avoid a chill on arriving back in my apartment. But 114 degrees gets to you in spite of air conditioning and swimming pools. It's out there! It's dangerous!
Doc actually bestirred himself to go to the Farmer's Market with me this morning because he buys watermelons all summer. So we returned home with fresh corn on the cob for barbecued ribs he purchased yesterday and yes, the watermelon. I ate this delicious lunch in his apartment with him acting as waiter. Yes, Doc actually serves me food and takes away the dishes just like a regular waiter might do because he can't stand dirty dishes sitting on our tables. He is the first husband or male companion I have ever had who actually waited on me. Just think of Doc, the waiter. What an endearing characteristic in a man. It is too wonderful.
He had recorded comedy central for our watching pleasure, so after watching two comics I returned home to embed the video I made this morning out by our big swimming pool describing how I barely survived the heat. Enjoy.

Doing laundry can cheer a person up who is down in the dumps

I thought that butterfly header might make my spirits feel lighter. It is sad when you can't go home again, but I did my laundry that was piling up, talked to some folks and I already feel better.
My niece is going to send me some of the books the Heritage Foundation is publishing which I am buying as soon as they come out. I have got one piece about my beloved Grandma King in the Women book. I have had a call in all morning to my son Dan up in my hometown of Boulder for the summer to help me with a computer problem. He is the go to man when your computer is acting up, even if he is in Utah. He called twice while I was doing laundry so now he probably won't call again for a while.

Oh oh, just stopped to talk to Dan and Raymond, my sons, who are on their way to St. George. I can tell they are having fun together. I commiserated with Raymond for being a poor troubadour and told him I was proud of him for following his bliss as Doc always quotes Joseph Campbell as saying. Dan gave me good advice about that sign on my blog from adobe flash player that keeps appearing. My sister saw it yesterday so it is really acting up. You might have seen it, too, if you came to my blog. He told me to try to taking off a widget or gadget and see if that speeded things up.

Doc and I made another video for his channel today. We made one yesterday but guess what we waited until afternoon to do it, and that is a no no with Doc. When he was supposed to lead and me follow he could think of nothing witty or entertaining to say as alcohol flooded his brain! So this morning I watched it and suggested we try to make another as it was morning and he still seemed to be relatively sober. So we did, and it was better!
On it I proposed that I go and get a job writing for New Times as my favorite Phoenix journalist, Sarah Fenske is leaving to take over the managing editor role in a New Times sister paper, The Waterfront Times. Doc knows the paper, it is in St. Louis. Two other journalists have been relieved of their jobs writing for the Phoenix Magazine, Jana Bommersbach and David Leibowitz. I have always been very jealous of Jana who is heavy, too, and used to write for the New Times. It seems she could do nothing wrong and has been a big success on the Phoenix scene for years, and I can't even get along with her. She is a flaming pro choice democrat liberal and she doesn't mind telling off people she does not agree with. I used to argue with David on Talk Radio when he was on KTAR, and he put me down, too. How two democrat liberals ended up writing for the Phoenix Magazine is hard to understand when the state is Republican and conservative. David was notorious for calling the legislators the '90 Dwarfs' meaning their brains, so that tells you what you need to know about him. He is 95 times more intelligent than most people. Anyway that is another job I might be able to secure as I am only 79. And don't have to use a walker yet. That should be a good selling point. I know Jana was at least 20 pounds fatter than I am.
Anyway here is the video we made talking about possible new careers for us or at least me writing for the New Times or Phoenix Magazine. We are starting to feel like parasites we have been out of work so long.

Contemplating broken dreams as life is winding down

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

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

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

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

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

My Aunt Vesta climbing Sadie's Nipples


DAUGHTERS OF THE SHADOW MEN

Chapter 23

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

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

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



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

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

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

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