My blog is getting too long and unwieldy, and this is a perfect time to stop posting on it. Instead I am going to start Daughters of the Shadow Men II on New Year's Day! The first one will still be there to access but I will be blogging on the second one. I thought and thought about it, not even hardly sleeping last night, and decided this was what I was going to do. I still need to blog because I do my thinking on there. I also need a place to put my videos since there are more videos I want to do in the new year. I also want a blog to link up to Facebook which I really enjoy, but can't really get my say in up there as I do in my blog. Facebook suffices for some, for the most part, but I am afraid not for me. I don't want to interrupt my relationship with some of the bloggers. I like to follow their blogs so want to continue to make mine available to them even when some do not have the time to read it all the time.
I am planning on making some videos this coming year with my son Raymond, to show Doc, for one thing, what sobriety can do for you. Doc is funny and he is talented, but he always has to come through an alcoholic fog. Raymond, on the other hand, has come to believe that sobriety is absolutely necessary for him to accomplish some of what he has set out to do. I want to support his position as much as I can.
I got the idea of a second blog continuing on from the first one from Charles Deemer, the writer of Writing Blog II. I happened to see his first Writing Blog posted on his blog and saw that it just preceded Writing Blog II, so I thought that is what I think I will do. I read his blog religiously as I have already gotten quite a few ideas from him.
I am feeling so sorry for Dana who writes Vagabond Journeys with his latest troubles with his computer. He has lost files and photos. Plus he got very upset, which at our age is not good, but I hope he will start blogging again with his usual confidence and ability as I count him as a good thinker in the blogging world.
Doc has got a backup expensive computer down to his place which he is still paying for that I can use when I am having trouble with mine. Plus I have a son Dan who is very good with computer troubles who has so far got me out of every bind I got into with the help of his son Dante. Ha. Dante is now banned from my computer as I can't afford to lose as much as Dana has.
I still can't figure out why it takes Dana so long to get on line, when I am on there in a moment with my broadband services. I stick with a certain brand of computer, HP, as I find it to be very reliable. Doc's computer is also HP which we made sure we got so it would be compatible with mine.
I am loving the battery Doc got for the camcorder for Christmas which cost him $80. We can film a lot longer now. So we are having fun.
Oh by the way, Cathy Rapicano, another blogger who writes DARE TO THINK turned me on to 500 and more photos of Egypt on Facebook. I love love Facebook for the photos. I love looking at all my relatives photos and all my Facebook friends' Christmas photos. They were great. I love the snow photos. I just love photos period. I love to take them, too, and am looking forward to taking a lot more in the coming year.
Oh, and I am so upset. The Farmer's Market closed for the holiday and bulldozers came in and started tearing up the parking lot! I am hearing that a high rise apt. complex is going up there, and if it is, the Farmer's Market will have to find still another place to set up two days a week. If it has to find another place I am afraid the Store which is open 5 days a week will close, too.
As far as I know the Farmer's Market people thought they were coming back to this parking lot. The guy in the store told me it was just being recovered. We will see! Well, they have been in downtown Phoenix a long time in several spots, so they probably won't leave, but where oh where will my Farmer's Market go.
I have had a great year with Connie's graphics. She still makes some wonderful ones for me. I am going to leave this header above on my blog, and I am going to start out the new year with another one of hers on my Daughters of the Shadow Men II.
I might even start writing my memoirs again, and then maybe not. I will have to think about it! So Talley ho, and just look for the II to find my current blog.
I decided to replace that Revolutionary Poets Brigade header with a milder gentler one by Connie that will convey my love of books but will not disturb. You can still see the cover in my review and can read my sister Linda's rather mild poem from the book called IN AWE OF THE OCEAN. I was certainly in awe of the ocean when Linda and I were visiting in San Francisco three years ago. I remember when I first moved to Los Angeles around 1958 and saw the ocean for the first time, we were so intimidated by it we found an apartment inland in Glendale which sounded more like Utah to us with that name and was over the hill from that disturbing big body of water that still reminded us of its presence with the scent of an ocean breeze coming in our windows every night. When Dante was a baby I went to tend him when his parents had an apartment in Imperial Beach close enough to walk to the ocean. Dan, his dad, had gone out to sea for 6 months. I would wheel Dante in his stroller out to the pier and we would go to the end of it to watch the fishermen cast their lines. Then we would play in the sand. Dante never wanted to come home.
Things were rather tense yesterday after my granddaughter who had been recovering from surgery tried to come down to north Phoenix from Flagstaff and hit the storm. I am sure she had been planning this trip to see her sister for days, and since Flag is only 125 miles away thought the storm would be no problem. It turned out she was caught on the highway for 6 hours and I am sure is worse for wear today looking for her inhaler. Flagstaff, it is reported, got two feet of snow!!
Phoenix does not get any snow so we worry about our relatives in Flagstaff. If any snow falls in Arizona it is bound to fall in Flagstaff which is over 7,000 feet. After Christmas Laura and my great grand babies, Wyatt and Kerynn, were steaming in the spa while it was trying to snow outside. Travis, Kelly Anne's son, had come up from Cottonwood. Travis and Dante have entered their dangerous teens! Dante said somebody hacked into his account on FB and disappeared it, but Travis has been going strong, showing all kinds of great photos, snowmobiling in the snow, the new skateboard he bought with his Christmas money. He took a photo of his beautiful mother, Kelly Anne. He goes to school in Cottonwood where his dad lives who married a woman with six children! Then they had one. Travis is the oldest.
Then last night my sister Ann's daughter Mala posted photos taken of my family and hers and my sister Margie's family in St. George. She put them on Facebook and on the family site. There were lots of photos that were just great, so that was next best thing to being there, looking at them.
This morning my sister Ann posted a beautiful photo of my niece Colette's 'Indian' Christmas tree, and she wrote about Colette's little new grandson who does not yet weigh 3 pounds struggling to grow and stay on the earth with his mother and dad and the rest of the family. I think Ann said his name was Kylar See http://kanyonlandking.blogspot.com/. The photo alone is worth seeing. Colette has decorated her tree with artifacts that she has collected, in memory and honor of her mother who died over 20 years ago, who also loved and collected Indian artifacts.
So I had plenty to look at and see this morning.
My sister LaRae, the artist and collector
This is such a neat photo of my sister LaRae, taken not long before she got cancer. This was the artist her. She always put herself together as an artist would.
Plus have been checking back on my son Raymond's blog http://cowboysandbohemians.blogspot.com/ where he has been doing some brilliant writing from his perspective. Everyone is busy at the moment, so few followers have had time to read the last two entries, but as writers, we must get used to quiet times when people just aren't reading our stuff. We still need to write, so we do. Writing animals have to write just like they have to breathe.
Doc just called me to bring my camera down along with my cage free eggs. (I will not eat his caged chicken eggs) (He just doesn't care). I don't know what he wants to photograph. He says it is a surprise. Maybe the second amaryllis has burst into glorious bloom. He turned the coleus this morning which has beautiful deep purple leaves. He is the only person I know whose coleus plants don't die because his apt. gets no direct sunlight.
The manager had to deliver it to me as my sister had written my last name as King which it was at one time, same as hers, but the mailman did not recognize me even though my full address was on it. So I spent the afternoon looking outside now and then to a nice storm pelting the sidewalks (we can always use storm in our drought ridden country). I didn't take a photo as all the other Internet people are doing as we never get snow, just rain, and rain looks the same, winter and summer, except there is no thunder and lightning accompany this one, just a soft gentle life giving rain.
And inside I kept reading the poems in this book, giving voice to all the downtrodden of the world who might be crying for revolution to change things. A long poem about the HOMELESS IN SAN FRANCISCO reminded me of our homeless problem here, particularly around this old hotel complex. I think the homeless are always with us. I find the two poems written by my sister and decide if I am going to include one of those it will be, oddly, the one about the ocean. I need the feeling of peace in this poem, so I think rather than the calls to revolution poems I will write that one down.
IN AWE OF THE OCEAN
As I see this vast body of water
I am struck in wonder and
I'm aware of how small I am
And feel a little frightened
That something so large
Moves, alive, so close to me
One giant angry wave could
Sweep me into its salty depth
Never to be seen again
I feel its moods
Sometimes angry
Sometimes playful
Sometimes calm
Bored, restless, teasing
Loving, absent, sad
In your face, indifferent
Working, just working the tide
As it rocks and rolls
Hardly noticing me
So small, of so many
On its sandy, shell-crushed beach
Yes, I gaze in awe
With reverence to its power
And its vast life teeming within
A whole watery, strange, world
That I can never know
Yet, there is a kindness here
Reaching out to me with
A thousand fingered massage
Injecting me with energy
Loving me with every sound
Of a million musical waves
-Linda King
Jack Hirshman, long known as the Red poet is not afraid to be identified with a call to revolution, selected these poems written by poets from many countries. I am just not used to keeping company with revolutionaries so haven't quite gotten comfortable with the language. Linda wondered if she had become a communist poet by sculpturing this poet and going to his rallies for the homeless poets of San Francisco. I did see a lot of homeless there for such an expensive city to live in. Linda has always had empathy for the homeless and I am not afraid that she will ever accept any ideology she is not comfortable with. I have always thought people became too afraid of words like communism in this country, exaggerating the dangers of such thinking, for I think it takes acceptance of wrong actions to turn any word into anathema. We just have to be sure we don't accept wrong doing in the name of change, in my opinion. At the same time we have to recognize the downtrodden in the world, the indescribably poor, who when they can speak at all may burst forth with tirades at the injustice of life. Jack Hirschman likes encouraging those people without representation to write quite honestly about their grievances.
He has traveled the world and has talked to many writers. He speaks several languages and translated a number of these poems to English. You have got to learn something valuable by living the life he has. You have to give him respect for caring about those who mainly have nobody who cares. Thank you, Linda, for this book of poems called Revolutionary Poets Brigade! It is a great Xmas present! I can always look to you to give me a book that will cause me to think outside the box!
Five members of my family, my daughter Ronda, son Dan, and grandsons, Jamal, Ethan, and Dante, were in St. George, Utah having get to gethers with all the Utah family yesterday. They are headed back home today. They happened to arrive just as my niece Colette's grandson was making a premature appearance in the world. He is in the preemie unit in St. George weighing in at 3 pounds and must stay there until he is 5 pounds before he will be deemed big enough to leave. I haven't heard what his name is going to be yet, but everyone is so relieved he is doing as well as a 'preemie' can be expected to do.
In the meantime Ann said she met with my family and had discussions, a party, and food at two places, her daughter Mala's and my sister Margie's daughter Karen's. Karen is the best party giver in the family and has a big house. My niece Cheryl , Ann said, initiated a wonderful discussion. She told Ann's and my daughters, Ronda and Mala, that they should not complain their mothers talk (write) (blog) too much when her mother, my sister LaRae, is not even in the world to talk and must be picked up by telepathy if she is to be accessed at all. She thought they should take advantage of having a live mother while they could.
I was glad our niece Cheryl stood up for us as Ann and I both decided after LaRae passed that we would have to try to be substitute moms to her daughters, Cheryl and Colette. Cheryl facilitated the family web site where all the sisters try to write so she won't miss her mother too much.
She still misses her, but we were all certain she was in St. George during the tense moments her latest great grandson was being born, standing by in case he had to leave this world and go with her. There is nothing like a life or death crisis to remind us all that if life cannot be sustained we may at any time have to leave the earth, even if we are not quite 7 months old.
Everybody agreed the baby would be better off with his own mother and dad if his life could be saved, so the doctors and the nurses are trying their best.
My daughter Ronda, who has not been a nurse very long, no doubt offered as much encouragement as she could to affected relatives. Ann said her grandson Garrett startled them all with how well he could play the guitar at around 10 or 11. My grandson Ethan, 10, was very impressed, and he is no doubt thinking he had better get to work on his musical instrument as soon as he gets back home. I think he told me he had started playing one. Shayna, Ann's granddaughter, who has a beautiful voice, sang along with the guitar. Shayna has always been great pals to my grandson Jamal who is now 19, and they had a good chat. Shayna graduates from high school this year, while Jamal graduated going on two years ago. They haven't seen each other for a long time.
I don't have a picture of them together, but since Mala and Ronda grew up playing together they continued to be good pals after they were married and started to have families, along with Linda's daughter Rissy who lives in San Francisco.
Dante has not been to Utah since I took him when he was 8 years old. He is now 15, so he was having a good time, Ann, said getting reacquainted with all the family again. I am sure glad they got to see him. His father Dan has been going to Boulder the last two summers, but just has somehow not been able to get Dante up there. Now he has gone up there, perhaps it won't be so hard next time for him to go.
I am so glad my son Dan got better acquainted with his Utah family in the summer as Ann said he was really having a good time reuniting with them. He now feels comfortable about teasing and jiving with them, so it sounds like he was having a heck of a good time.
Karen, my sister Margie's daughter, had all four of her boys home in St. George at the same time, so they were all there, some with wives, and even one with a baby they are all having fun tending. Aaron the youngest is due to leave on a mission in the spring.
There is nothing like a great family gathering. I am sorry I missed it, but next best thing is hearing about it. Ann has a speaker car phone so we were able to chat quite a while without me worrying she might run off the road. I think she was getting home before the storm hit. Our storm is due to start any minute.
I hope my family on the road misses most of the storm. They are probably almost here by now!
Oh yes, Connie did my header and another one I can't wait to use. I sometimes save them a while for the perfect time. I love her graphics. Check her blog out for tags http://visitconniesplace.blogspot.com/
I had a fight with Doc because he wanted to put 40 more minutes of what he called the 'Turnip Lady's' rant on Christmas morning on his emdedoc you tube channel. I wanted to explain in video why I deleted, deleted, deleted it. It portrayed me as a scold and 'verbose' and him as a cool alcoholic. I am barely tolerable when I am smiling and relaxed, let alone when I am grimlet eyed and raving. He has consented to put the following video on his channel instead under another name. You can still see the 'Turnip Lady' on his channel in 'Celebrating Christmas to Death'. He will be celebrating New Years to death also.
My niece Colette's new grandson has come early, but now the preemie unit in St. George, Utah must do their best to keep the little fellow here in this world. I knew my sister LaRae who passed on over twenty years ago, the baby's great grandmother, was keeping watch. I am sure when a baby comes into the world too soon, family spirits gather ready to receive that child's spirit if survival is too hard. While I was meditating last night my Uncle Kent came in who I rarely talk to, so I said why are you here? There must be a reason. Minutes later I found out the baby was on the way to being born, nearly 3 months early or not! Kent delivered babies many years of his medical practice. Surprisingly in his late 40's, he quit to become a psychiatrist and spent 6 months, I recall, in Russia and other places. He and my sister LaRae were good friends, so naturally he would be concerned about her great grandson.
Kent as a Navy Medic
I had also been getting for the first time that my sister LaRae had committed to taking care of two babies in the spirit world who would have died before ever having been born, one of the many children of abortion.
My Uncle Kent's daughter developed a rare condition in the blood vessels in her brain that caused her to have seizures. There was nothing they could do about it as the problem was too deep in the brain for surgery. It could not be fixed, but she has managed to live to her sixties with the help of drugs and is just now selling her dental practice so she can retire. I am glad. I am sure that will be less stressful for her. I had several dreams about my Uncle Kent thanking me for showing concern for his daughter. His son, there were just two of them, is also a doctor back east. Kent died when he was only 56 of a heart attack. His condition was also inoperable he felt. His wife has lived on to the age of 89! We heard she was to her daughter's for Xmas, so she must be unusually hale and hearty. Mother lived to the age of 89 but was too deep into old age dementia and silence to travel. She was also in a wheel chair after she refused to rehab a broken hip. Kent's wife Emmy was a nurse, so perhaps she has relied on her nurse's training to help her survive old age well!
I am thinking am I insane? This novelist was on the cover of Time. Says here is the winner of the National Book Award. I buy this novel for myself for Christmas. I start to read and not very far into the book I have to put it down. I don't see how anything can make me pick it back up again. If my son was acting like the guy in this novel I would be so worried I would not sleep at night. Let's see he is a youngish professor not yet tenured who has an affair with a student who keeps tempting him, is suspended and fired, so starts borrowing copious amounts of money from his younger sister. First of all I can't imagine any sister I know lending that much money that frequently to a brother who has screwed up. After he gets completely broke, he starts stealing food at the grocery store. Here is about where I stop.
And I have been worried about my son who simply cannot stop working. If he has to change jobs he goes out and finds another one so fast your head whirls and starts working 12 hours a day again. He has done this ever since he went to work full time at 15, so he could afford a car, cigarettes, and beer.
I worry about him drinking too much. But I never have to worry about him not working. He loves to work. And it's hard mysterious work in the construction business he has learned to do after many years experience. First he was a backhoe operator, and then he gradually got promoted to foreman jobs, and then to supervisor and project manager jobs. Then he said he wanted to learn how to bid jobs, so he agreed to take a job for two years in Tucson for the construction company if they would let him learn the bidding business.
Let him learn to bid! He is still bidding, but now he has had to practice his computer skills at home, because he no longer has a secretary that types the bids, he has to do it. Oh, so he will learn that, too. Let's see he is 57. No problem.
On the way from his house back to mine, when he was taking me home from dinner, he was looking at a crane. He once tried very hard to get a job learning to operate cranes, but just could not make the transition. He did it for a while and loved it, but he said the business of crane operating was too hard to get into. He said if he had another lifetime to do it in, he would find a job operating a crane while young. His house looks like a construction worker's house. There are models of cranes and other big equipment an ex-wife gave him as gifts. He has canvases set up around the house in various degrees of completion, of cranes. There is even a half finished portrait of me. I recognized it by the blond hair and rather beefy arms. I recognized another ex girlfriend of his by her mop of wild black hair. That was Jessie who once tried to cut him with a knife. He got a kick out of her violence for a while, but got tired of her tearing the rented trailers apart when she got angry, breaking windows and such. And kicked her out, but that didn't work so he left the state and came back home to Phoenix. And for some reason or another she couldn't leave. She had little dogs. Years later she found him and called and asked him to send her money and she would come to see him. So he didn't.
I have lost all respect for the son (yes, he is somebody's son) in this novel because he has acted irresponsibly in too many ways.
I was going to give it to my other son Raymond to read after I got through because he is surviving by doing all kinds of things including singing for his supper. Can you imagine how much nerve it would take to sing for a bunch of people with the confidence they would tip you enough money to last you a few days. When he was in Austin, TX he said he was going to try singing on a street corner, but decided he better head back home. I saw a brave little lady down town the other day who was playing her violin on a street corner. I hope she earned enough money for her supper and more.
My son Raymond has quit drinking a number of times, once for 7 years, other times for a year here and there, because when he is directing or acting in a play he says he can never drink. It is only when a production is over that he sinks into some kind of let down like is this all there is, and might drink, but this December he celebrated one year of sobriety again. He has quit smoking many times. I asked a girlfriend of his if she had ever known anyone who quit smoking so many times, she said no. But the important thing he never stopped quitting smoking and it has now been quite a long time since he smoked. Besides, he finally got too broke to afford cigarettes. He would rather eat.
I have another son Dan who was so into sports when he was in high school and living clean that he left a bottle of champagne someone gave him for graduation in my fridge a whole year before I insisted he take it out. I was never going to drink it. In the navy he did finally learn to drink but I have never been able to think of him as a fright to drink as I have my two older sons at times. He seems to be able to leave it alone, or drink with his navy buddies, whatever. He never gave me a moment's worry in high school for which I will always be grateful since I did not know if the other two would survive those years.
My daughter graduated from college, didn't like teaching Spanish, said the kids didn't want to learn, left teaching, found other jobs, and after she got married, she went back to college and got a degree in nursing. She also studied one of her issues, breast feeding, took a test that cost $578, passed, and was qualified as an International Lactation Consultant, which education she now uses in a nursing job she just loves. She was too health minded ever to smoke and as far as I know does not drink to excess, although once she got rather tipsy to a Margarita party my son Dan's wife gave him for his birthday (Angelina was the world's best little bartender at the time). She said as we all left, Mom, I hope you don't intend to put that I got drunk on the family site! But she is so perfect that I am telling it now so she will seem more human.
I mean where is this Franzen getting his material from? I wrote a novel when I was 29 and when I finished it, I thought oh, oh, publishers will never buy this novel, the protagonist is too concerned about doing the right thing (they didn't).
Doc was still drunk when I went down to his apt. on Christmas Day from celebrating all by himself the night before until after midnight. I was so disgusted because his brain was working so slowly. You know how it is when you are trying to have a conversation with an inebriated person and they just can't get any thinking going? That was Doc. He started calling me verbose. Only a drunk would call a normal person verbose because her normal heightened brain activity hurt his head, and he could not respond in kind. I ended up raving for about 40 minutes and he wanted to put that all on You Tube on his channel, I suppose to try to show people what a nag I was, but actually I was recalling my childhood with a father who got drunk every weekend. My mother turned to food, not realizing she could become an 'olic' too. (foodaholic) And she fed us candy, cake, cookies, butter, until we were heavily addicted, too.
I was telling Doc in the 7 min. video we did put up on his channel that a woman diabetic in here had been going off her diet for Christmas, eating pies, etc, and ended up in the ICU for Christmas. I heard they had to amputate one of her legs that was very bad, but it turned out to have been a stomach operation instead. So alcoholics aren't the only ones tempted to binge at Christmas. Foodaholics may kill themselves sampling a thousand desserts coming their way for days. Tis the season to 'celebrate oneself to death' as I insisted Doc call his video.
His step daughter back in St. Louis watched it and I could tell she could hardly stand the nagging I was giving Doc, so I told him he absolutely could not put 40 more minutes of my raving up there. Nobody could blame us irritated souls trying to talk to drunks whose brains are seriously out of commission from alcohol, but nobody else wants to hear us rave, it seems.
I decided years ago somebody had to restrain themselves in the family or we were all going down. I recall my mother in a fit of rage jumping up and down and yelling, "I want to be bad, I want to be bad." I really think that she decided if my dad was going to be bad, she was too, and although she did not smoke or drink she found plenty of other bad stuff to do like lying and cheating and having affairs with married men. She had such a bad temper we could not talk to her about it. I tried once when I was around 22, when she was driving us somewhere together, and she told me if I did not shut up she would run the car off into the ditch! Even though I had her grandson in my arms. I was scared she might do it, so I shut up.
Doc is an outlaw, too, basically, who thinks being bad is more fun and less boring than being good. He equates being good with being 'religious', but that is just poor thinking. He has not seriously tried to control himself enough to concede that takes more strength, intelligence, and dedication than just letting all holds go and becoming an alcoholic who fixes himself a drink when he wakes up and drinks all day on the grounds he is not hurting anyone but himself.
Well, he is still attached to somebody, and I am always trying to change my eating habits, and have had some success, but still have to keep trying. My life is all about trying to affect the addicted including myself and get better habits going. I go to the dentist 3 times a year and he hasn't been in years. So who cares the most about their danged gums? He says well, you knew I was a bit of a hedonist when you met me!
I am afraid one of these years, all too soon, Doc will be gone from having celebrated Christmas to death.
I suppose guys who like to binge might like this novel "Corrections." They would have the fun of reading about a guy letting all holds go and just becoming a complete shit. But I have lost interest in the guy while he is still in his downward fall. I cannot make it to the Corrections.
Even publishers are prejudiced against more controlled people trying to do the right thing, even though the world keeps on turning probably more from the efforts of this branch of people. I stopped writing novels when I realized that people trying to control themselves are perceived as not that interesting, exciting, tolerable. But so what, I don't like this hedonist's novel either. The protagonist is already too out of control for me to keep tolerating. Franzen has lost me. I told Doc I liked the book I gave Raymond better about a man and his 'thinking' dog. That dog was magnificent. I know my dad's horses brought out the best in him. Sorly was one magnificent cow horse, and he never ever got drunk!
Oh by the way Connie made the magnificent header for me. Isn't she talented?What a worker she is!
Here is a little bit of the "Celebrating Christmas to Death" video so you can see what I mean.
