See EndingAbortion.com live web cast Saturday!

You need to register before to see the web cast live, but if you cannot make it, you will still be able to access the web cast any time after. A number of topics are going to be discussed throughout the day. I got hope and inspiration from this last web cast of pro life activists from across the nation.

Federal Government and Obama to sue Arizona over SB1070

They say the law is against Federal guidelines in several places even though it was designed to enforce federal law against illegal immigration that has gone unforced for years. Arizonans sort of expected an adverse reaction so we are fairly prepared, but I hope this lawsuit does not try to extract money from us we do not have! Few columnists are of the opinion that congress is going to act on illegal immigration any time soon. So if they wait too long this might have an effect on the fall elections. Democrats in the state possibly worried about their chances of getting re-elected begged the Feds not to sue. Now what?
I talked to a woman in the doctor's office who was walking at such a slow pace I asked her what happened to her. She said that six months previously a car had come around the corner and plowed into people crossing. I said how come? She said the driver wasn't paying attention, and I extracted from her the information that this was an illegal driving with no license and no insurance. Her pelvis was broken in several places. She said that was the first time she had ever been hurt in a car accident and she had bill collectors threatening to sue her for medical costs, etc. I want to point out that when illegals come here they are probably going to only be able to get low paying jobs and so very often they do not have the money for insurance. If you are already breaking the law by entering the country illegally breaking more laws might not seem like such a big thing. People get cars whether they can afford the insurance or not.
So here in our state where law enforcement works so hard to insure that people do not drive uninsured or unlicensed, lawbreakers with illegal status are constantly bringing the numbers down. What does congress and the president say about that?
We are also reading that a dedicated officer of the law, Sheriff Babieu in Pinal County close to the border has been targeted by the drug cartels for assassination! I surely hope this threat is not carried out. Of course, I am sure that Sheriff Arpaio has been receiving death treats for years.
That is all I am going to say about illegal immigration today. Isn't that enough?

Off to the doctor I go!

In twenty minutes I am off to the doctor. I am finishing up a couple of appointments following up the cat scan I had to have last fall for a check on my kidneys. He said there was no cancer, but he wanted me to have another sonor gram to see what is there which he said would probably be a benign tumor they would just leave alone. I need to walk about three and a half blocks and back to the doctor and I expect the temperature to start going up and up. I am dressed in very thin clothes just in case!
I posted a photo of me in my pink bathing suit but I was still wearing glasses. Due to lack of energy due to a long talk I had the night before on the patio with a new resident, I did not get in the pool yesterday. I knew I had to take this walk today so decided to preserve energy. It is necessary to be very cautious walking anywhere in the first high temperatures of summer especially. Doc about had heat stroke the other day from walking in it. That was the day it reached 114 degrees. It was morning, but I told him he should not walk in it. He was buying a feast for the 4th of July so he could not be dissuaded. Even those of us who have dealt with the heat a long time can make mistakes!
I will post this now and add a post script if there is anything to add about my health.

P.S. Everything is okay! Next appt. late September.

Looking rather tattered, I emerged for the last day of our long holiday

Holidays this long are usually not as welcome to residents in a HUD complex as they are to the workers who need them to recuperate, especially if it is a paid holiday. I am going to try to swim today even if it is still a trifle cold for Phoenix in July (104 degrees). Our 110 regular summer weather has held off this year, which is not bad to take, but just not what we are used to! Except for that one scorching 114 degrees we have had unusually cool weather. It will be interesting to see what the rest of the summer brings.
Sat out in the patio late yesterday afternoon where it was very comfortable. I watched several residents cavorting in the water and chatted with two older residents, one of whom just moved in. I try to make my way down to the patio to talk to any of the still living out there before I resort to a spirit dialogue, if needed. I have always turned to spirit dialogues for comfort after becoming partially disabled. When one foot feels like it is in the other world, you are able to access those who have passed a good deal easier, although I always felt uneasy with their accessibility and still do.
I did get a chance to see Barbara, the widow of the man who just passed in here a couple of weeks ago. I gave her a hug and she told me he did not suffer. I came home and did a spirit dialogue connecting to my good friend Bob who passed a couple of years ago from having cosmetic surgery on his eyelids. He was a good friend of Clyde's and he assured me Clyde was happy to be in therapy to restore the use of his legs to him. In his case, it may take some time as he had gotten too heavy and his legs were shriveled. Bob joked he was never going to live down having passed to the other world from cosmetic surgery to make him look more attractive to the ladies. He apparently felt so good he was even out fixing computers laying on his back when the doctors told him he should be resting. The next thing he knew he was on life support. I will never forget how Clyde cried when he was told in my presence that Bob had died. He thought he was going to be okay. Everyone was shocked.
I used to play pool with Bob all the time who would have been the complex's best pool player if his eyelids had not drooped. When he was managing the computer room I used to go in and talk to him all the time. He was so easy to talk to. So we had a good chat.
I asked him how our mutual friend and my former neighbor Karen was who also passed not long after Bob. She died from a heart attack at around 52. She had her first heart attack and was the first one I ever heard of who got up out of ICU and left the hospital after having a heart attack. I told her anyone else would have been too terrified to do such a thing!
Too much damage had been done to her heart from diabetes which had not been diagnosed and she had another one. Her sister took her cat Freeway, her constant companion.

So you see in the Westward Ho there is a highway to the hereafter used quite often and there must be hundreds of ghosts of those who resided here coming to visit from time to time. I think you do return quite often to the last place where you spent many years of your life.
Some residents give little thought to a hereafter, but their conversations can get very limited if they do not think they have a future! As far as I am concerned, they concentrate too much on their aches and pains.
But I found it so difficult to find people to talk to and still do that I required visits from the spirits to keep going. Contrary to what you might think they want us to live a long active life and will do everything they can to help, including giving you pep talks if you think of faltering. I do think those who spend unhealthy hours contemplating suicide would benefit from talks about what they expect to gain by such a waste of life from any source, people here or spirits from beyond who must surely fly to the side of the afflicted ones who threaten to take their own lives when the going gets rough. They must feel really alone, when as far as I am concerned there are many to help lift their spirits if they had a little faith.

I have just been thinking from years of study of crime that those who are the victims are often thrown into years of dealing with the fallout, if they are not out right killed. If the perpetrators are named and arrested then the victims are likely to spend years waiting for trials, testifying, and recovering from what was done to them, and from being the publicized victim.
I tried to avoid this by never naming the molesters or talking about what was involved, but now I am finding myself going through that process when I finally decided to tell the whole story before I passed. I find there is no avoiding the fallout once you start to talk, or start to publicize your memoirs.
Which gets to be quite a disturbing process, but I think one of the main reasons you do it is to try to prevent future such crimes from happening. I have chosen to talk about the role my father played in my years of enforced silence just so men like him will feel warned. People keeping silent have always encouraged those who have trouble being honest to their wives and children.
Unfortunately I encountered similar attitudes as my father's at the University of Utah, which convinced me even more that I had to break the silence of so many women, sometimes just because they are too naive or too insecure with their own perceptions of what is hidden. My reactions to such very nearly got me killed in a psych ward where I was incarcerated by the University psychiatrist. This made it all the more imperative that I tell my side of the story.
It has taken me a lot of years to get to that point. I had to spend my depleted energy just staying alive first. But I could not wait too long either.
What has dismayed me about doing this is just going through the fallout. Exposing my point of view and indeed looking to publication for these memoirs. Right or wrong, I must get these memoirs out there. Even if I have to stay in exile the rest of my life.

"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.