Those are the words you're gonna have to eat!

" I don't love you anymore, I'm glad that we are through.

Those are the words that I said to you.

Take those words and coat with chocolate, make them sugar sweet.

Those are the words you're gonna have to eat."

I tried to find this song on youtube and ended up with a recipe for Buttercream Frosting.  While that was not my original intent, I needed that also.  Many years ago this was one of the songs Corky and I danced to at the Convention Hall Saturday night dances in Hutchinson, Kansas.  Some girl sang it and I can not remember who, but it is playing in my head as I type. 

But it is not the song that is important, nor who sang it 60 years ago when Corky was the love of my life and dancing my only passion, but rather the words.  "I don't love you any more, I'm glad that we are through.  Just what was it that I thought I saw in you?  Take those words and coat with chocolate, make them sugar sweet!  Those are the words that I'm gonna have to eat!"

Now Corky is a distant, although pleasant memory and his face has faded from my memory, but those  words are still in my head.  This past week has brought that song back to the forefront and made me rethink a lot of stuff.  As I watched our capitol was being invaded by men and women carrying the American flag and smashing anything in their way into the bowels of the building where government business was being conducted.  Windows were shattered and men and women elected by us, fled into hiding.  Democrat, Republican, Independent seemed to make no difference to this mob.  And as I watched I could not help but wonder where our leader was?

I do not need to tell you how that little scenario played out.  America is still standing.  The Captiol building is still standing.  You and I are enjoying the same freedoms we had before and Joe Biden will be sworn in on January 20th.  Nothing changed except now a whole bunch of people will be arrested and tried, hopefully for treason or at the very least treasonous acts of terrorism. A few people are dead and that is sad.  But let's go a step further and question what they thought would happen.

They did this supposedly because they loved America and wanted to own her.  Did they think if they got into the building that you and I would just say, "Oh look!  They are in there, now Donald Trump will still be president.  He will rule the United States and we will be his followers?"  Methinks these people should have listened when they were studying the government in school.  America is a Democracy ran for the people and by the people.  We elect our officials to do that so we do not have to go to Washington ourselves.  If we had wanted to keep trump we would have voted him back in for another 4 years, but we did not.

For many years, I was an Independent and was registered as such.  I voted for Reagan and Bush.  I voted for Kennedy.  I cast my vote for Jimmy Carter and learned that just because a man is a good Christian and loves his wife does not mean he will be a good President.   I am not vocal in my politics and as long as whomever is in charge is fair and honest, I am content.   I will not go into this any further, only know this:

America is strong and designed to stay that way.  It is called checks and balances and we use it every day in our daily lives.  It is sad that this had to happen as the whole world watched, but that is modern day communications.  I imagine Putin was laughing his ass off and cheering the rioters on while doing so, but I was very sad.  So I went to youtube and I found this https://youtu.be/EBjEjoAzdHE .

So rest in peace,  America, the good guys are still in charge and peace will prevail.  To the people that tried to bring her down, sorry.  You should have read the Bill of Rights and peeked at the Constitution.  The game is not "King of the Hill," it is called "Democracy!"

Cursive? What is that?

 I woke up this morning remembering the first grade at Nickerson Elementary School.  It was a big two story red brick building just one block down from where Main Street ended.  Why is it that 72 years later I can still remember the buildings in Nickerson, Kansas, but I can not remember what I needed from the grocery store? I think there were 3 or 4 sandstone steps that led up to the double doors that opened into the first floor.  The first floor held the first 4 grades as well as the kitchen where Mrs. Ritchie cooked the meat and potatoes that was the staple noon meal for the kids who could afford to pay for meals.  The little Bartholomew kids carried a sack lunch which was eaten at the other end of the long lunch table.  It was sort of like the lunch counters at Woolsworth where the "blacks" were not allowed to set at all back in the days of segregation.  Kind of funny how some things in life never really leave our psyche.  But I digress.

I was 5 years old when I walked into the hallowed halls of learning.  The first thing I learned was that my coat went on a hook on the wall and not just any hook.  We were assigned a hook in alphabetical order according to our last name.  Which brought us to our first lesson we would learn....the alphabet!  Across the front of the class room was a giant blackboard.  Above the blackboard was mounted the alphabet.  Directly below each letter was a picture that we should associate with that letter.  A a Apple apple.  Bb Boy boy.  Cc Cat cat.  You get the drift.

I can remember how my little mind hungered to learn all the letters.  All 26 of them.  At 5 years of age I somehow knew that if I could learn those letters and if I could learn to count, that the world would be my oyster!  It is funny how the young mind can grasp a concept when it wants to.  Learning was the most important thing I had to do at that age and I was going to do it right!  The fact that about as soon as I mastered those block letters, I would advance to second grade and on to third where the little block letters would fade into "cursive".  The letters I had worked so hard to learn were no longer in use and now I must learn "cursive."

Learning cursive also entailed practicing making loops and swirls until they were all even and my skill at printing now became "penmanship."  I was a natural!  Cursive was much faster than printing.  It looked better.  My mind was now free and unencumbered by the restraints of printing.  I loved to write and to me the greatest gift in the world was a blank tablet and a pencil.  I was enthralled and the love of writing never left me.  For many years it was buried under the guise of motherhood and the need to work to survive.  (Love of alcohol also interfered in that time period.)  But time marches on.

Penmanship became a thing of the past at some point.  I am not sure when that happened, but I was having coffee with my Republican friend in Kansas when he told me he would like me to come to Topeka and write thank you notes for him because I had beautiful handwriting!  While I was flattered at the compliment, I was stunned to learn that schools were no longer teaching "cursive".  I actually thought he was bullshitting me, but he wasn't.  

Since I was am longer in the loop of school age children I do not know what the status of cursive vs printing is.  Maybe someone out there can tell me.  We are in the day of computers and text messages and I think the only pen and paper stuff is the grocery list I make occasionally.  I have, however, become adept at asking the question, "Can you read cursive?" when asked for my address.  Usually I am met with a blank stare.  How sad is that!

I guess I will go google it!  I have a box of stuff from my mother in the closet.  Uncle Ray and mother corresponded regularly and it was always in cursive.  It is sad to think that I should actually throw that stuff on a fire, because no one will be able to read it.  

Bret just came up and I asked him if he can read cursive.  His answer was " I can, but it is confusing."  During our brief discourse  he made this statement:  "It is sad that cursive has been lost, because with the loss of cursive goes the loss of a language.  The Declaration of Independence and all the old documents are written in cursive, so they can not be read in the original form."  

So let me drink a cup of kindness now to the little red brick school house that no longer exists and to the teachers that taught me how to write my name and put my thoughts on paper.  They have faded into posterity, but never from my mind.

Mrs. Breece, Mrs. Wate, Miss Holmes, Mrs. Howe, Miss Swenson, Miss Lauver, Mr. Schrieber, and Mr. Bolinger.  You will live forever in the hallowed halls of my mind.

I hope I do not get deported!

123 years ago a man named Johann Jakob Haas and his second wife, Maria Dorathea (Schrade) landed at Ellis Island Immigration Center.  They came from Dettingen Wrtt, Germany.  Those 2 people were my  great grandfather and step great grandmother. He had 9 children with this second wife.  This was called his second family.

 (Great grandfather had been married before and fathered 7 children with his first wife, Elizabeth Beck.  My grandfather was in his first family.)

At the time I was born, Jakob and Maria had been in the United States of America 47 years.  I guess that makes me a third generation immigrant!  Not sure how that works, but it seems my kids would then be fourth generation immigrants.

How sad it is that I woke up this morning with this on my mind.  And that my second thought was that I am a child of white privilege was even sadder.  My grand children are a mix of races.  I have one black,  2 Indians, one mexican and then then token white boy.  The great grandkids are a hodge podge and we no longer see color at my house.

I know that our government is "cracking down on the illegals" and this breaks my heart.  To see a mother torn from her children and sent back to Mexico because a paper is not in her possession that gives her the rights I have makes me sick.  She raised her kids by working and spending her money in the local market place.  Her kids went to the local school not just for a day or two, but for years.  Years.  She wanted to be here or she would have gone back to Mexico a long time ago.

Does anyone except me remember when the government cracked down on the illegals because they were taking work from the local people by working in the fields?  Seems the migrant farm workers did not come and the crops rotted in the fields because that was work our local people who were legal did not want to do.  Hot out there in the broiling sun .

Our government has never made it easy to get citizenship and it has never been cheap.  Lawyers and paperswork and courts do not make it conducive for people who work very cheap to afford the help they need.  So punish them.  I was born into my citizenship, but many were not.

I know of one man who is 3 semesters short of getting his degree in business management.  He has worked hard to pay tuition and buy books by working in the fields, but he is not a citizen.  He will be sent back to Mexico under the current regieme.  His father was granted his citizenship, but has not received the final paper.  It is lost out there somewhere, so all he has done has been in vain.

Somewhere along the rocky road to today, this freedom train went off the tracks.  The government is fighting the Indians because the pipeline wants to go across thier land and water and do we remember who was here first?  Hell no we don't!  We took thier land.  Then we decided we didn't want them to be there and we took that land and gave them different land and now we change our minds again!  I bet the Indians are wondering why they invited us to that first Thanksgiving!

It would be nice to build a big rocket ship and put all the elitist ignoramuses on it and ship them to the moon and leave us peace loving people here to drink out of the same water faucets and play on the same beaches.  Remember the hippies?  Remember the love generation?  Remember the Viet Nam war?  Remember Stonewall? We are afraid of immigrants.  They might do us harm.  Remember Timothy McVey?  American born.  Remember Columbine?  American born!  Where is our rationale?

It is going to be a long day.  I wish I had a bright spot to give you, but this morning I do not.  This morning my heart is bleeding for my America.  The one we had before someone decided to make it great again.