Watching "American Cowboy" on cable and remembering

Doc thoughtfully recorded several of the series "American Cowboy" that covers the ranching life of three different ranching families in Montana. The all around yearly activities in Montana ranch life greatly resembled the ranching life my family experienced in southern Utah in the rough canyon country just east of Bryce Canyon. The above photo is one taken back before the native ranchers started to sell to outsiders and Boulder, Utah, my home town, changed in so many ways while still remaining the beautiful country that it will always be.
There were no sons in the King family who wanted to take over the ranches as in the ranching families in Montana. My cousin Richard who was my father's sister's son took over the King ranch when she retired and ran it very efficiently for 8 years. He had after all been a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force so he knew how to organize and work. I was very impressed with him because like my dad he worked even harder than his hired men, in fact, he improved the ranch with sprinklers, etc. He fired one long time hired man because he refused to have anything to do with the sprinklers. He said it was ridiculous for this hired man to expect him to change the sprinklers before he would do it, so he fired him for insubordination. Ha. But he had no children, so when he wanted to retire and work less hard, he had to sell out.
My dad had no sons. He tried a son-in-law out as a possibility to take over the ranch, but my sister who was married to him was a graduate nurse who would not be able to pursue her nursing career on the ranch, so my dad decided it was in her best interests for him to sell out. Besides that she was allergic to hay, grain, horse hair, etc. She really needed to get away from the ranching life! She went on to have an impressive nursing career, so that was the right decision for her.
It really takes a strong capable man to do the heavy work on a ranch. A woman just cannot do it. My aunt ran the main King ranch for a while but she was at the mercy of hired men which did not always work out too well, since they were not involved in the ownership.
I never wanted to go into ranching, so I started saying good-bye to that country quite soon. My first husband did not like the work and I did not think he was cut out for it when he did try a year or two of being employed by my dad. For one thing, he was not comfortable on a horse, he was a singing cowboy!
My son Raymond, his son, is certainly a great singing cowboy. He could have done the ranch work, but he was too much of the showman. I majored in theater in college, and he also took theater classes and showed right way he was a natural born actor as well as a good director, and quite soon he was writing plays.
He has pursued the same dream he saw me chasing all my life, the life of a playwright. I was always having play readings and trying to get somebody to do one of my plays. I became partially disabled, so I became handicapped acting in theater which involves considerable stress, especially before an opening. I gave up acting in plays just so I would not get too ill to continue which can be one heck of a downer for the other people. I had also directed but that involved stress as well in a city setting. I could not command the authority for that. I did not have the stamina.
Last night I watched the two plays of six I have put up on Youtube, Daughters of the Shadow Men, and Happy Hello, Sad Goodbye. I think they both have in them material that would interest more people once they are discovered. There is quite a sound defect in Happy Hello, Sad Goodbye as we had not yet learned to turn off the air conditioning when we filmed! It was a very hot summer. But at least in these videos I was able to partially fulfill my dream of acting, since Doc and I do all the roles between us. I thought well, if I don't do it this way, I will never be able to show that I can write plays and act--while I am alive to enjoy it. We improvised! The videos, although flawed, have substance which I think is the most important quality that a play needs and is lacking in many old movies. I put everything I had experienced in life into these plays. The strength of the material gives them value.
I think Raymond is going to create another theater event this month in Boulder with his play "Into the Desert" which he has produced three times, improving it and revising it. So it is a well polished play that he plans to do on the top of a ledge out away from the house a man named Anselm has built up there in a real desert setting! The actors will be close to the sage brush and rocks that have been there hundreds of years! They are really going to get a feel for this wild country up on that ledge, and so will the audience that treks up there to view it! He has worked a number of years with the actress he plans to cast in the female role, Tracee Rhode. The actor playing the male role has come clear from Los Angeles because he fell in love with the play. So this acting duo has considerable promise. Raymond will direct. He has directed many many plays, his own and others, so he will be able to add much experience and expertise. He has always been a master at building creative sets practically out of nothing.
He has created many great theatrical events in Phoenix and now he will attempt to create another theater event once more in the wilderness his ancestors made home in the act called 'homesteading.' That really appeals to my imagination. He has taken my kind of dreams and with his health and strength made his own way as a master showman.
I always wanted kids and put a lot into them. They were to be part of what I thought I could still do well even though disabled, I could raise and teach my kids what I knew. I worked with Raymond for ten years as much as possible in his theater company, attending the workshops, seeing every production, writing plays continually, and fighting battles with the critics with letters to the newspapers, etc. My play, Happy Hello, Sad Goodbye was one of the first full length productions Raymond directed as he was creating his company. Prince from Saturn, another play I read on YouTube, was another of his productions. I wrote Daughters of the Shadow Men before he wrote one of his most successful plays, "Blue Baby: a memoir", which I encouraged him very strongly to write. America has yet to see this play. It is his job now to see that they do because it deals with issues America needs to see illuminated, substance abuse, child molestation, sexual assault in jail, and suicidal tendencies.
Raymond is a major playwright who never shrank at writing about any issue however difficult nor in producing another writer's play about the most complex of issues. That is what it takes to be a major player. Now the big job lies in getting the work discovered. With that goal I will help him all I can.

The roles that common sense, books, and family played in my life

Just a few comments will always stimulate still another discussion in my mind. Having been born in a state where one church (Mormon) was so dominating, I naturally gave a great deal of thought to religion. But my father's problems made him an even more dominating presence in my life since I thought the well being and continued survival of the family depended on him. If we lived we would fare a lot better, if he died while we were still children, dire poverty faced us, as he would not have left much at all had he died in his early forties.
Whether I believed in the religion was not going to make a big difference in my life. Instead I thought reaching my father was critical. He operated entirely outside the church as did his father, so I was in a sense raised outside the church. He and his father resisted being a part of the church, even though neither made any fuss when their wives went to church. They were the bread winners with the cattle ranching both did to earn a living.
I did not see that either one of them were Christian men either, that is had any beliefs about Jesus one way or another. They were what I call free thinkers. They set great store by books and newspapers. They both paid for their children to go to college. They both subscribed to the Salt Lake Tribune that took a couple of days or so to reach our town. My mother took many magazines which my father read especially if they covered current events, which included Life, Look, Reader's Digest,and other such magazines. My mother was always buying books, some of which my father read. I felt a great deal of encouragement to read everything that my mother brought into our home, and as soon as I went away to school I checked a pile of books out of the public library constantly as well as accessed the school libraries.
I soon perceived away from home that book reading on the scale I was used to doing it was not common among the students. I had to wait until college years to find similarly inclined students. I ran into very few in high school. One of the reasons for this being I thought was that the religious leadership encouraged the active members to read books that were either put out by the church or met their seal of approval. I, on the other hand, read indiscriminately. What ever problem was troubling me I would always try to find books covering the subject so I could see if anybody else had good ideas I could try.
This was particularly true about my father's severe problem with alcohol and also with his bisexual problem. Everywhere I went I would be intensely aware of other people I thought were struggling with the same thing. I was drawn to theater and literature because of the gay element of society they attracted. I would pour over books that even mentioned the problem. I heard in college that the French writer, Andre Gide, had a similar problem so I would read his books if I could find them, because he did indeed write more frankly than most American authors did. I read Proust's Remembrance of Things Past because it was recommended to me by a brilliant student who I thought was conflicted like my father. He did not choose to talk about it as most didn't who had married and had children. It was very rare for anyone to 'come out' in Utah. The disapproval generated by the religion among other things was too heavy. A lot of it was just the times.
There were a number of English authors who were illuminating on the subject--the brilliant novelist, E.M. Forster is one. He wrote Passage of India and Maurice which was about his homosexuality not published until after his death. Vanessa Regrave, the famous English actress, wrote a memoir about her struggle to accept her father's bisexuality. He was the famous actor Michael Redgrave. I certainly related to any daughters who might have had a father similar in any way to mine.
Christian churches, so many of them, used passages in the bible to justify severe disapproval, which I thought could not possibly help a person predisposed toward suicide, as my father was.
I thought it was not right to drive anyone inexorably toward suicide who I came to conclude could not have helped those feelings from emerging due to a number of causes.
So I did not think that the churches dealt with this problem as wisely as was necessary. It was just too easy to interpret statements in the bible to fit one's own disapproving opinions. The condition is disturbing, so many are tempted to find justification for rejection and even persecution.
I saw having been born to one as a reason to find another way, and to promote study and understanding of all the factors that might lead to a person being so conflicted.
What compounds all the difficulties is the fact that early molestation and influence while very young might play a role. Molestation is definitely wrong, but when the molested child or teen develops those feelings then great care must be taken not to punish someone for for feelings that have developed as a result. I know from being molested very young how deeply disturbing adult sexual advances can be to a child. I became convinced that boys in the family ran a lot bigger chance of being molested than I did, since I did boys' work which was how the molester had easier access to me. I suspected my father had been influenced in this direction at an age when he was powerless to do anything about it.
He might have victimized others who were underage at another point, but he had started, I became convinced as a victim, so child molestation needed to be studied a great deal more. That made a lot more sense than biblical condemnation.
I know that the women in my family were all too unaware of molestation that might be going on. My mother never detected that I had been molested and was concealing the fact. I did not trust any adults enough to confide in them. I did not think they would handle it right, and I was sure that most of the boys were even more loath to tell anyone about what had happened to them of that nature.
So I saw the big job of prevention as far as parents were concerned involved becoming more aware of what might be going on around them that could affect their children.
I loved my Grandmother King dearly, but I thought she hardly knew a damn thing. She could not even tell when my father was drunk! He lied to her constantly. He would lie to anyone if they believed him! My mother read a great deal more and she was a much more aware woman than my grandmother, but she was very ignorant on the subject of homosexuality. Mistake!
She did not know enough about child molestation. In fact she even implied later that she had been molested, but she did not believe that relatives should be denounced for it, so she kept quiet?? What was that all about? Who might have a better chance to molest a child than a trusted relative?
So I saw child molestation as something that parents should be a great deal more aware of since I just could not get this information told, and was in fact, desperately trying to surface it someway while in college when I ended up going to a psychiatrist and being incarcerated. By that time he viewed my efforts to surface this as evidence of a very disturbed mentally ill person. Well, I was disturbed all right but highly indignant at being incarcerated against my will and threatened with electric shock. That experience all went bad before I was through with chronic fatigue syndrome kicking in that had started as a child and a near death experience that partially disabled me. I was a good deal more damaged physically when I came out of the hospital even though I had finally told someone I got molested! Did I about have to die to get it told? Apparently.
So actually I could not see that whether Jesus was God incarnate or not made much of a difference in my life. I didn't think it could be proved anyway. What was important to me was whether people could be relied on to use the thought process when dealing with major problems I was dealing with.
Religion has been accused of affecting the thought processes adversely, for good reason I think. For example the prophet Joseph Smith made many claims that the Mormon church has had the difficulty of trying to convince people are so in order to spread the gospel throughout the world. I would say that people who would be most apt to believe in fairy tales are the most susceptible. Educated people, no. So is education a bad thing?
More knowledge is not a bad thing in my opinion even when it causes people to doubt church doctrine. I do not regard more book learning as detrimental to human beings. Books are probably the best way there is to disseminate knowledge, to get people to think for themselves. And to learn about many complex and disturbing conditions people must deal with. I do not think that religion is necessarily the only way to teach right and wrong, but it has long been regarded as the best way. Yes, if learning and book reading are not restricted by the religious. I see religion as very useful in certain areas but only if the religious are open to the necessity of using common sense and the thought process in applying all religious principles. In that case, the religious are less apt to use the bible to promote discrimination or rejection, but rather to encourage understanding and acceptance of what people cannot help.
Life is very complex. The thought processes are necessary to handle it. We are born with brains for a reason, to help us study ourselves and our surroundings so we can survive and even do what we want to do with our talents and minds. Do what has been proven human beings can achieve.

I chose the above header by Connie because cattle ranching is how my father and grandfather made their living.

Defining the principles that I live by

I went to a the web site Truth Out you will see on my blog list and read quite a few articles which caused me to think I needed to write an entry more clearly defining the principles I live by. I chose this header because it was Sunday and I wanted to explain how I came by my belief in God. As a child I lived in the middle of conflict and chaos brought on by my dad's drinking. He was a severe alcoholic and I was his oldest child. During childhood two of his 3 brothers met alcohol related deaths, one brother in his early twenties. In my teens the other brother died who had also had a drinking problem when he was out of the hospital where he spent his last days diagnosed with incurable mental illness. My father had many severe crises with his drinking which he miraculously survived. During all these crises and deaths I thought our family could not survive without divine intervention, so you might say I woke up every morning with a prayer in mind. I did not find comfort in the church, because the Mormon Church did not deal well in my opinion with alcoholism. The faithful were instructed to live by the word of wisdom so those who violated its precepts, especially drinking, simply stayed away and I thought were basically ignored by the faithful, even if closely related.
I became accustomed to my father living a very isolated life with only his drinking buddies talking to him. My mother was always angry at him, so they basically did not talk. They just quarreled.
As I saw it the only sober people my father talked to were his daughters. He did not have any sons, so he often took one of his daughters with him to work with cattle or help him on the ranches in other ways. I loved horses so I would eagerly volunteer to do any work riding horses. I also saw these long working days as an opportunity to try to influence my father if possible, or at least assure him that some of his relatives cared if he survived. I felt I had to format my own connection to God to get help. He surely knew about all the children born into the homes of alcoholics, so he better than anybody had to know what our trials and tribulations were. You might say I thought if God does not exist I will have to invent him as I need somebody to talk to about this.
So I got in the habit of having a talk with God every morning to start my day. When I went away to school I started keeping a journal which started off each day as a dialogue with God. I studied the bible in Mormon Seminary when I was away to school, so it helped me to visualize a God who would continue to help our troubled family so that not only I but my younger sisters would not have to suffer too badly until they could reach adulthood and take more control of their own lives.
I let common sense be my guide. If anything did not seem to make sense I would tend to put it aside as not necessary for a working belief in God. This included quite a few of the more quaint Mormon beliefs like baptism for the dead or that every person on earth needed to become a Mormon to be saved. This rather seemed to be egotistical wishful thinking on the part of the Prophet who conceived this idea, but it seemed to make practicing Mormons happy, some of them. This claim could not be proved wrong in their opinion until the hereafter, so it seemed to get quite a lot of support. I did not support it, since my father surely would be banished from that kind of heaven, since he was not a church goer, and banishment was not my goal in all my efforts and prayers on his behalf.
His mother, my grandmother King, was very religious as were his sisters, so if this philosophy was so, they would be separated in the hereafter from the alcoholic members of the family. In fact, his sisters had separated themselves from their brothers in this life, anticipating what would happen in advance I suppose.
My father was raising me, and all the work he did when he was sober went toward supporting his family. When the time came he even paid for my college education because by then he had survived his worst drinking years by cutting back finally, maybe only going on two or three binges a year which was a vast improvement over what he had been doing.
Despite my mother's efforts to separate him from as much of his money as she could, he was still able to leave the bulk of his assets to his five daughters when he died. I thought he knew he had been a great trial to us and caused us extreme stress, so in a sense he made up for it with the hard work he was able to do when he was mostly sober. Investing effort in his recovery turned out to be a smart thing to do as he was a smart, capable man in many ways.
I had become partially disabled, I thought due to the tremendous stress I had experienced as a child in that home, and his money I inherited helped carry me through to my fifties before I was forced to apply for disability because I could not work any more.
I thought well, the God who spoke to me on a daily basis counseling continued love and support of my father to help him survive rewarded me and my sisters in the end. My father still remained a very difficult character, but we sisters persisted in taking care of him after my long suffering mother had left him, until he died of a heart attack at home at the age of 64. He had had so many crises, he seemed like an old man. We were so thankful to get him to that age without him killing someone on one of his binges, which he almost did in the last year of his life when upset over an ill advised second marriage breaking up caused him to get drunk. He wrecked his car on the highway, but the young men he hit in his big car only suffered one broken leg among them.
I just really could not have survived those years without my daily communion with God, the creator. Only he would know why alcoholics had their free will to become parents. In one of our communions he said that sometimes the only person who could reach such hardened men were their children! Voila! I understood. It was true. If one of us really got angry and lit into my father, if our logic was sound, you could just see him wilt. My mother would say during those early years I was the only one he listened to. Well, I thought the reason he didn't listen to her was because she no longer loved him. In every way possible, she registered something very close to hate for him. He thought she was only sticking around to get as much money from him as she could. I had to laugh, as sometimes, it was true, she would say plaintively that the doctor said he would die of his drinking and he had not died yet. Clearly we daughters and she were at cross purposes. She would often fantasize what she would do with his property if he did die! I recall him saying to her, "I am just not dying soon enough to suit you!"
My mother was kind of a child like person. Her thoughts were easy to read, but you know what I loved her, too, just the same as I loved him, no matter how difficult she was to love, too. I knew how tried she was by his behavior, and it was even worse than she thought.
I had long ago concluded that my dad was a bisexual because one of his partners molested me. There was a lot more to this that I won't go into today, but this was my conclusion at a very early age. Oh my word he was such a difficult man, only God could have helped me to try to love and understand him. He hated himself I had come to understand. Nobody in that country hardly even acknowledged there was such a thing as bisexual married men. The men kept their secrets, but because we daughters were asked to do boys work I had stumbled upon them, I thought. I became privy to some of their secrets and I did not dare tell. It would have been too dangerous for a child to be talking about such things, so I kept silent as all the young boys did I am sure who also found out one way or another.
Actually this is difficult knowledge to impart anywhere, has always been, down through history.
So I had to figure out how to handle these suspicions in order to help my suicidal father not to go ahead and kill himself as he seemed bent on doing. I had to try to convey to him that I understood why he was trying to kill himself, but it was not altogether his fault, what he had fallen into, I thought. First he had been innocent I was sure. Then he had been forever changed so that he would have to lie to my mother and conceal some of his nature in order to try to have a 'normal' life. This would not be the first time such men had wanted to live a normal life nor would it be the last. We children had come along but since he had been unable to change, he would leave home every weekend to spend time with his drinking buddies, enraging my mother and eventually alienating her forever, even though she did not seem to know quite what all he might be doing. So I did not really blame her.
I just thought that they needed to take care of their children. I thought Mother just did not want the responsibility of all of us children, and she could hardly run off and leave them with a drunk and call herself a responsible mother, so they tried to get along until we were grown, with mixed results. The fact is, they quarreled until it was almost unbearable.
So I would think anyone could see that I did have to call on God to help me with these family problems, invent him if necessary, all over again, as I believe men have always invented God when they desperately needed him. Perhaps that is how we come to knowledge of God. We see that he has got to exist to help man survive.
A strong belief in an all seeing God is very powerful. I don't presume to understand whether God created me or I created him, but he is a very powerful friend. I gave him attributes I desperately needed. He was there in the darkest hours. Even when I was close to dying, he shone his light and said, "I am here."
I will talk more in future entries on how my beliefs expanded as I encountered more problems in adulthood.

Farmer's Market, rain, and life and controversy in Arizona

It was wonderful to have rain in Phoenix again last night, even though a thunderstorm in Flagstaff that put down nearly 2 inches of rain raised havoc in a burn area with floods. They would love the rain, but anywhere there has been a fire, rain is going to be a hazard until the ground cover has grown back.
The weekly trek to the Farmer's Market was very pleasant. I got some corn on the cob and cucumbers. I made a trip to their store yesterday so now I am stocked up with the most delicious fresh fruit and vegetables imaginable. I also got an organically grown pork roast. I have fallen in love with organic, since to me the food tastes more flavorful. I am a farmer's daughter, so I really appreciate fresh!

The paper was full of more news about how the citizens are feeling about the implementation of the new law SB1070. Even though Judge Bolton removed what might be considered the 'heart' of the law, what is left is acting as deterrent to illegals, causing some to leave and some not to come, which is more or less the purpose of it. I was reading today about a man who has been here for 20 years without documentation, has three children, and is tearful about what he could be expected to do. This is an example of how lax attitudes toward immigration have caused many to go without even trying to get documentation for years. So that is of course causing a lot of upset to them and to their kids who could not be responsible for what their parents did or did not do. But a lot of times people need to be prodded to comply with the law, so the federal government being lax about enforcement has caused big problems in my opinion, and of course this attitude has extended back through several administrations.
I saw Governor Brewer being interviewed this morning by John King on CNN and I thought that she made clear what the state is trying to do with SB1070, so even if the law is not popular with people, especially those who are directly impacted, it is still tackling the dangerous ambivalence of our government toward an important issue, even concerning our national security. What is the sense of going all out on airplane security and turning a blind eye to illegals coming from not just Mexico, but other countries as they will. That is just not common sense. Yes, we have long borders, and the problems of securing them is difficult, but continuing to work on the problem is the key!
Guess I might be accused of hammering away at an issue, but I think you have to be consistent in what you do. And you have to make sure you don't turn a blind eye to a problem. Forget about it before adequate measures have been taken! I do not think law enforcement can be blamed for pointing out how dangerous their job is having to deal with drug trafficking illegals that is not even fully acknowledged by the government or even by people who cry racist without looking at the total picture.
Dealing with illegals is not racist! It is dealing with people who come across with full knowledge they are breaking into the country hoping to get away with it. Who are doing it because that has become the accepted way to find a better life, because others have gotten away with it, doing it for so many reasons.
Naturally they are going to do a lot of reacting and protesting when this way of coming into the US and living and working here is threatened. They are going to say anything that will bother those who want to crack down on this practice. Crying racist has been a defense which citizens have taken up who oppose whatever the other party does without worrying whether it makes sense. The illegals are alarmed and hurting, because that was naturally going to happen if the practice came under fire. Their children are going to hurt. It is going to be a mess for years to come!

But that doesn't mean we can stop working on the problem in my opinion. So pardon my continued concerns on this issue. I will be reporting from time to time on the progress I think is being made. I am very encouraged by how many people have come around to the idea there is a problem. I think we tend to be a people who do not like to deal with problems. Why else would we neglect such an important issue as illegal immigration for so many years? Congress very often reflects the will of the people so if the people don't want to be bothered, the people who represent them in congress tend to follow along. Politicians are notoriously loath to go out on a limb, fearing their political careers will be cut short!
So I can't worry about my popularity as I continue to write on issues. I have dealt with thundering silences for years protesting abortion, but I felt it was wrong and that eventually people would become stirred enough to do something about a very very difficult issue.
I was just reading about all the trouble the candidate in Nevada is experiencing, Sharon Angle, a republican woman who is pro life, as every statement she has made has been scrutinized when it comes to the issues where she opposes long time democrat pro choice senator Harry Reid. Now it looks like she has a chance of unseating him! I see the latest news is that she has raced back to a tie with him! This is very good news for pro life activists. If a pro life candidate is seen as too extremist, she is going to lose ground. But I admire her courage in speaking out about the issue, even if she does make mistakes. She is continuing the work that must be done to convince the American people the legal killing of the unborn is a violent solution and again took our country in the wrong direction. Maybe she will even win this important election!

Communist countries introduced legalized abortion into their countries which eventually tempted many others to follow suit. But man has always had to work very hard to keep violence out of governmental policy. Because using a violent solution to deal with a problem can be tempting.
I see the democratic party as somewhat schizophrenic at the moment, championing legalized abortion to the point of even trying to implement government funding and propping up the abortion 'industry.' If we don't watch them very closely, they will try to get away with both. At the same time they are shouting racist at every turn as though their hearts bled for every person who is upset by trying to restrict the flow of illegal immigration. What do you make of this, without mercy on the one issue, and so concerned about needs and feelings on the other. You would think they were the kindest people in the world when they talk about illegal immigration. I say nobody is going to believe this is entirely so when the party champions legalized abortion as it does.
We have doctors doing intro surgery on the fetus to correct defects at the same time doctors are being asked to kill fetuses of the same age. To me anyone who champions abortion is not going to admit that abortion is inhumane.
Rivers of blood have all too often followed the overtaking of a country by revolution and communist thinking which is why we have come to fear it. I lived through a lot of wars. I have not forgotten those rivers of blood. Legalized abortion is a river of blood and we on earth will not be able to say we are living right until we can become a more humane people who will believe there is a better solution to a pregnancy problem than one million legal abortions in this country alone every single year since it was legalized!
I would love to be able to get along peacefully with democratic associates, but as long as they champion pro choice I can't. I have already learned that most of them get very angry over the issue. They are not yet ready to see the wrong in it. I am a registered democrat who continues to be pro life because I do not think the word democrat can cover legalized abortion. The democratic party has been taken over by those who have interjected their communist leaning thinking into it, which upholds legalized abortion and the idea that a river of blood is justified to support this belief system. Some powerful democrats have bought it. And tried to insist that all people who believe in a God that forbids it are stupid. I say it is stupid to allow yourself to be coerced into believing in a violent solution. They are the ones who have been had.
I would say that the conflict we are having now in our country has become very very important, it is actually a battle between right and wrong. Legalized abortion is wrong. Those who champion it are wrong and must be defeated. As peacefully as possible. And those who oppose it have to be very strong.
I support Governor Brewer also because she is pro life and has shown her strength by passing all the restrictions to abortion the legislature passed, as the proceeding democrat governor Janet Napolitano, did not. She vetoed them all, and thus kept those restrictions from ever even getting past the governor's desk!
I will continue to be a pro life democrat seeking to take the party back from the pro choice faction that now controls it. I won't go libertarian because I once believed in the democratic party too strongly for that, when Medger Evans and Martin Luther King and the Kennedys were still alive and pro choice did not exist. Then a democrat dared to say he or she believed in God! Now they do it knowing a real battle is on their hands, and rejection by many of their own party members.

Today's news in Arizona and beating the heat!

Connie is helping me to beat the heat in hot hot Arizona with this cute graphic.
I also got news today that my friend Joyce Gittoes has been nominated for an 'Ari-zoni' award for her acting performance in "A Lesson Before Dying." I reviewed this production some time ago and thought Joyce did a wonderful job. She wrote me that the show has achieved 9 zoni nominations, which I thought it deserved as it was a very moving production with a good script, good direction, and actors. You could not ask for anything more. Congratulations, Joyce, I hope you win!

Joyce is standing here in front of the Viad Building which houses the playhouse in the park.

We had a sad day in Arizona yesterday as three undercover police officers making a drug buy were shot, one fatally, in a house where thousands of dollars worth of marijuana was found. One officer has been released and one is still in the hospital. In this case, no tie to illegals has been found among the shooters who apparently decided to rob the undercover officers.
The federal government was expected to reject Arizona's leadership in stemming the flow of illegals into our state every way possible, so the Judge's action on the bill SB1070 was not unexpected. However, I highly recommend that you go to The First Amendment: Not Politically Correct, a blog on my blog list that gives you some scary information about the nationalities of illegals flowing into this country. If nothing else will, this blog entry will convince you our borders are not secure! National Security according to this blog entry is somewhat of a joke when as many illegals can cross our borders as they do. http://tsalagiman2.blogspot.com/
I have not had too much play on my video. I know that the democrats are trying to suppress this topic of discussion as much as possible because the Federal government is not prepared to act on illegal immigration very soon. People get tired of a hot issue eventually and go on to other concerns as well, but I still feel pretty emotional about it. I have always thought such a porous border threatened national security. It is just too easy for dangerous people to get into our country! I think people are right to get more alarmed. I do not think people should be allowed to break the law with such impunity. It takes about 13 years of constant gunfire around your apartment to convince you that one act that is illegal often leads to many more.
So I think we citizens need to keep this issue on our agenda as something our government needs to address!
In the meantime, I hope I can swim today! The water feels great! That's the best way I know of to beat the heat in Arizona.

I woke up this morning to Gov Brewer getting skewered and the district judge taking the heart out of SB1070, Arizona's immigration law

The New Times upset me as well as the Arizona Republic headlines. These are both liberal newspapers. I did not think Governor Brewer deserved being skewered as she was in the New times, because writer Michael Lacey does not appear objective to me any more on this subject. He has a vendetta going on with Sheriff Arpaio of several years standing, dating back to when he and another New Times executive were arrested one night and jailed. The New Times had printed Arpaio's home address which angered him to this point. Well, at the same time headlines this morning reported the SLAYING of an undercover officer as well as two other on law enforcement side hurt. I will bet the names of the criminals involved will include illegals. You know being a law enforcement officer where officers get shot at on a regular basis tends to make such officers a little more testy than most.
These are the guys we had to call when a big gang war erupted on the west side around our apartment complex and the bullets were flying. They were the only ones who could possibly deal with the gun violence. I don't think Michael Lacey has to deal with gun violence on a regular basis so I am willing to give law enforcement a pass on possibly getting too rough with him. He is not on the front lines as a journalist. Not like law enforcement is. He hasn't even been living here most of the time for many months even though he tries to sound like he has in this article.
I don't write letters of protest to either one of these newspapers anymore. They won't listen to people like me. They have their own agenda. I feel like the Governor and law enforcement represent me more than they do. I called law enforcement many times to help on the west side. They were the soldiers who had to fight for the citizens being engulfed in the violence in these Mexican neighborhoods. They did not ignore us. They always came. We had them come to talk to us regularly on what we could do to fight the violence on the west side. A Mexican man bought the complex next door and pledged that with the help of the police he would evict the gangs. I did not believe he could make a difference, but with the quick responses of the police he did. The violence got less. How thankful I was when I could leave there, after my kids were gone, but my Mexican neighbors are still there if they have not been shot.
This complex is so peaceful compared to where I lived before. My neighborhood Mexican citizens were victims just the same as I was. I am speaking up for them as well. If even the Federal government has not enough interest in enforcing its own laws, what is to be done? Let them get involved the way they need to be, as law enforcement has to be, pledged to answer every call for help.

In a prayerful mood after an inspiring day

I spent an hour and a half in the pool today with Bill who suffered a stroke not too long after I moved here around 13 years ago. He was unable to walk, was paralyzed on one side. He said after he left the hospital, friends helped him move in here. At the time we had a kind of cage in the lobby walling off the rest of the complex as security, and he thought he had been put in prison. He kept asking, "But what have I done?" I suppose they thought he was more or less asking God why he had a stroke and did not realize he really thought he was in prison. I told my son Raymond, is that existential or what? This delusion persisted quite a while, but I remember seeing Bill work so hard to get to his feet and walk very slowly down the sidewalk. Most of the time he has to stay in his wheel chair or scooter, but he can walk if he has to! He also quit drinking and smoking and even earns money at job he does for a friend on the computer! He is quite the success story. He was a relatively young man when this happened as his hair is still black as coal (he is part Apache). I have always thought how strong those people who have stokes have to be to come back at all. I always feel like praying for Bill to continue living and being the inspiration that he is.

I have to pray for another lady I do not know but is my sister Ann's grandkids' other grandma. She is the mayor in the town where Ann lives and she and her husband have run a restaurant for years. I have always gotten the impression she was a whirl of energy, around 60 years old. Well, she lost her voice and now they have finally got to the bottom of it, the doctors have told her she has incurable lung cancer which has metastasized into her throat and even into her heart and there are 6 lesions in her brain! They are amazed she has been able to do what she has been doing right up to now. She has unfortunately been a long time smoker. I am sure the whole town is praying for her right now as you might say she has been totally blindsided. Ann's son and her daughter were about to make a move to Austin, Texas next week with three grandkids of Ann's, and she told them she wanted them to take advantage of this opportunity, to go. What a brave lady!

Another one on my prayer list is old guy in here who has been fighting prostrate cancer. Well, Friday I saw him out in his usual chair in the lobby where he has been coming for a long time, when he wasn't in the hospital. They said they took him to hospice Saturday, and he must have died over the weekend, because his photo was up Monday saying he had passed on. So here is a prayer for Warren for a happier journey into the hereafter. He graced us with his presence right up until almost the day he died. I always love it when people live life to their last breath.

Last of all another prayer for my son Raymond who is launching off with another theatrical event up on top of Thompson's ledge with a play called "Under the Desert." Funding is scarce. I committed $100 to it, as I know he produced this play 3 times, so it has been extensively revised, and should be very polished. An actor has come from Los Angeles who you can read about in his blog Cowboys and Bohemians, and a long time actress in many of his plays, Tracee, is coming from Phoenix to do the woman's part. She is very excited about this big role. She was the one who has come clear from Phoenix to do the lights for the festival for 6 years.
So I am sending up a prayer for this play, praying that it will be an inspiration for everyone who sees it and will carry Raymond into his next move and next project with strength and resolve.

This poster is one Connie made for Raymond's "Bohemian Cowboy" which he is going to be doing in Escalante, his dad's hometown this Saturday. This is one of my all time favorites of Connie's creations. I think it is beautiful. I am also sending up a prayer that Raymond will have a successful performance of this haunting play about his dad who disappeared above Los Vegas into the desert nearly 4 years ago. Everett Ruess's disappearance haunted Escalante for years who was an artist and writer who came there to become lost, but now one of their own has disappeared into another desert and will always cause a twinge of sadness because no trace of him has ever been found.