Verytelling...

You know how sometimes you watch a tv show and you get a secondary message?  I guess what I'm trying to say is, you watch someone's reaction to something and it is more insightful than what the show actually has to offer?

I like the show "Who do you think you are?"

A few nights ago, they were exploring the heritage of actress Helen Hunt.

Helen found out that her great-great grandmother was a prominent figure in the Christian women's temperance movement.

You could literally see her cringe and shrivel.

Her ancestor was a Christian trying to stop alcohol?  Of course, Helen was filtering through a modern prism.  For me, it was very telling to see her reaction.  I can't help but think ... gee, is it THAT bad to think that your ancestor, in her time, was a Christian and a temperance leader?

She acted like she'd discovered her great great gran was a Nazi-collaborator.

Chill...Hollywood.

Helen got an education.  Women had no vote back then and alcoholism was rampant in society.  It was destroying families and was a factor in men beating women.   The ONLY avenue her ancestor had available to try to make a change was Christian women's temperance.

Gawd forbid great-great-gran is politically incorrect.   But shoot...she came before you ... have a little faith.

Occupy hoodie

I believe Americans must have the right to peaceably assemble.  In the early days, I even attended a Tea Party protest here.  My decision at that time was not to join the Tea Party, but to remain GOP with Libertarian tendencies.  I feel in flux now.  There seems to be a horde of some who take a moment in time and pass judgment upon it.  Like Nancy Pelosi saying she "saw swastikas" (something that was NEVER substantiated) at tea party protests...it led to many clueless uber-liberals infesting the blogosphere with Godwin.

It's good when life intervenes in cyberlife because it makes us unturtle and look around.  It makes us really commune with our elders.  The ones who don't give a whit about what happens on a computer.  I suppose it's healthy for a person now to straddle two worlds ... the concrete one ... and the cyberworld because cyberland can impact the real world.


At 41, life's odd.  I'm either in the middle, or young, or old.  There's really no telling.  I have some longevity in my family, but I also have some early deaths.  Will medical science produce me some miracle cures for what might end up ailing me, or do I have months/years?  It's a good place to be, though, because I don't have to pretend to be either young or old.  I don't need to pander to youth OR old age.  I can watch what I see and comment about it.  I can do this whether you like it or not.

I'm lucky because I've been both blessed and cursed.  Jesus is my savior, but I'm not impractical.  Everything could be illuminated, or it could all go south tomorrow.  Whatever happens, I'm not afraid.


Knowing these things, I have some advice for the occupiers...


1) - If you are a Nazi or a communist, you are shit out of luck.  We have the second amendment and that's just the way it is, baby.


2) - If you aren't American, GTFO.  Go back to your own country and try to make your demands there.  Change in America should and must be left to Americans.  There is, literally, NO OTHER COUNTRY like the USA.  We're only 200 plus years old and we've invited a plethora of different ethnicities here to the golden door.   People have achieved greatness and overcome adversity...people of all stripes.

3) - You may think you are erudite because you practice moral equivalence.  Real Americans, though ... know right and wrong and we're willing to call it like we see it.  If you are not right ... we'll be here to call your bluff.   We're one nation under God and OJ might have been found "not guilty"...but where is he right now?  I imagine Casey Anthony doesn't have a minute's peace.

OJ did it.

4) - If you hate the system of government we have and think it should be different and if you hate America... seriously...go find a better country.  Move and put US out of your misery.  If they won't take you...maybe you'll finally HAVE to quit whining.


5) - I don't have a problem if you don't believe in God ... but if you want to try to REMOVE God, well, you'll have to go through many people.  If the militant God-hater, Satan-servants get the majority and decide to persecute those who believe in peace and have faith in God, this will turn into a terrible painting and God ultimately will wind up removing the blasphemy and throwing back a blank canvas.  Count on it.

6) - Quit hating the rich.  I understand your grievance with people who have genuinely done wrong and share your wish to see them brought to justice, but you are going too far.  Guillotines?  Really?  French revolution...are you nuts?  Our education system is rotten if you truly think we're at the stage for THAT KIND of revolution.  In France, people were starving.  Most Americans, if they'd get a sense of perspective...would understand that not being able to afford a video game system doesn't mean you get to lop of the head of the guy that owns the local electrical company.


7) - Turn yourselves away from the idea of violence or any system that could result in abuse of power and totalitarianism.  Understand the possibility of unintended consequences.  Maybe it will make you better understand checks and balances.

8) - Check your sources.  Internet is a mixed blessing.  Things are at your fingertips, but it's incumbent upon you to check and check and check again.  Your superbuddy might have this blog that you love because it confirms all of your biases ... but if 50% of the content is bs ... no one should accept the other 50% either. If you are listening to someone and they are getting you all wound up and angry and feeling like you are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore ... breathe.


9) - Quit blaming the older people for the current situation.  Especially the really elderly.  They have wisdom and are the real heroes of the nation.  They went through an ACTUAL depression and didn't occupy anything but their houses of worship.  They have a lot to tell you if you'll listen.  Sure, they may say things through clacking dentures, but shame on you for writing them off.  They sit by the window and pray that the USA will remain a good place for the little sweet kids' faces to keep smiling.

My Nana and grandpa are concerned that you might be a dumb@$$

*pause to take a breath*


10) - These occupiers in the USA should not be invoking occupations in other countries, particularly in the Middle East, because those aren't really turning out so well.  We all hoped, but hope doesn't buy you reality...does it?  So ... if you want to make YOUR occupy movement a good one ... find your sanity and come up with a coherent plan that works within the framework of the US government...  Also, understand that because of instability and evil in some corners of the world, the USA must NEVER sacrifice its upper hand militarily.


If you do...I may join you.  Until then...I'm going to occupy hoodie.

Stttttttttrrrrrretch.....

I'm always ever too much in my head and not so much in my body.   Recently, I did a little bit of beginner's yoga and I sort of enjoyed it.  I'm not the worship-Gaia, eat-granola type and I never will be...(I'm NOT buying Kashi again)...but I picked myself out a yoga DVD that I thought I might be able to handle.

Sure enough it started out with green advocacy (not that there's anything wrong with that) and was produced by Ga.i.am  (this is like Will.i.am?)...I rolled my eyes.  I am not Gaia...I'm just one of Jesus' rowdy kids inhabiting the blue marble.

Jill.i.am I started the tape and tried to follow and quickly found out that it's WAY above my pay grade.  So I had a conversation with myself.  Those happen sometimes.  This time I won and I decided that I'd stop the tape, turn to a music channel on my cable and stretch at my own pace.  There's a groovy one I landed on called "Soundscapes."  I thought, "A soundscape is JUST what I need while I try to breathe and stretch."

It was lovely.  And I satisfied my inner tyrant because I did it my way.  At the end, I decided that I should stretch my back.  I turned to another station and it was I think "soft contemporary".  It was a musical version of "Are You Lonesome Tonight".

Thinking of Elvis and all of us lonely people made me sad.  I'll stretch my back later.  But hey...it was a small victory for the day.

Happyness is...

my pet cockatiel Peeps not walking the floor trying to chew electrical cords ... or sitting on my tapestry frame chewing it, but contentedly preening himself while sitting on my ankle.  Spoke too soon...he's down on the floor now.  Oh well...I had to go to the bathroom anyway.

We r looking @you.

The funnyrushed feeling

...when you know you have stuff you've procrastinated to find and do...and you are hurrying...you tell yourself to slow down and all of a sudden you discover something that MUST be done today in a completely obvious place that you weren't looking.

Oh man. I have common sense retardation. Example.

I'm down at the laundromat and the washers can only take a smaller load.  So, as usual, I split my laundry into 4 groups and start the washers.  Now...what do I usually do?  When they are done...I load them into 4 dryers to dry.  Today I have an epiphany long on it's way.  The dryers hold more clothes than the washers. Instead of running 4 dryers (as is habit)...I can run 3 and save money and energy.  It was an "I coulda had a V8" moment...only I don't really like V8...but I DO like spending less on laundry.

Retirement Community - June 2007

No one else is awake as she breathes the morning's first smell of damp basement.  She slides into her favorite blueberry top and shorts.  Up the stairs silently through Nana's aqua living room to the kitchen.  She smiles at the extra IGA white bread on the counter.  Gets a chair to retrieve six Brachs coffee candies out of the biscuit tin on top of the fridge and into the pocket.  Swoosh as the bread slides off the counter and swings in her hand.

Back down the stairs and into the flip flops effortlessly as only the limber-toed can.  It is still wanting to be night.  She grabs her fishing pole and makes her way down the rocky yard to the dock.  The ascent onto the dock is creakless.  Two turtles are asleep on a log ten yards away and she wants them to know she is no threat.  They don't need to plunge into the safety of the water yet.

She knows that she is paying time.  There must be time spent in order to catch enough fish for the fry.  They bite on white bread doughballs and they live right UNDER the dock, but they don't jump into her hand, even though they do bite dangling toes.

The lake is the best color of the mood rings in the souvenir shop.   The sun is not yet punishing, with its double whammy off the lake and inevitable end with Solarcaine.  Pale children should fish in the wee hours of the morning, before the adults stake their claim on the day.  She will go to church on Sunday for show and tell, but she knows this is also Close to God.

The silence perfectly counter-balances the plunk as the first baited hook drops into the water.  Almost immediately there is a tug, followed by smaller tugs and she pulls in the line.  The sunfish is beautiful, but it's not as big as her hand...so she removes the hook and puts it back in the water.  She decides to make the next dough ball bigger.  She wants it to descend further in the lake before a fish bites.  There is a little lead sinker, but these fish bite fast.

The next one is a keeper.  She breathes relief that there are still some big enough fish left. 

The next hour and a half are hers to harvest the fish dinner.  Later there will be places to go.  


As she sees the lights come on in the house and she detects the coffee smell wafting out the screened-in porch, she takes her fish to the cleaning board and carefully readies them to be frozen.   She takes the bucket of fish parts to the edge of the lake and releases them back where they came from.  The turtle starts and splashes into Lake Thunderbird.