Kids' say the darnedest things!

Back when the television set was still black and white, before color came along, there was a man named Art Linkletter.  He was a "host" and one of the shows he hosted was "Kids say the darnedest things."  This was a show in which he interviewed children in ages probably from age 3 up to maybe 6 or so.  You know, the ones who are not old enough to have a filter yet and living in the age of innocence.  He would ask simple questions and sometimes get complex answers.  His books can still be bought and I am sure they still sell very well.  I doubt that Art Linkletter is still on the upside of the sod, (and that having been said, I will go check it out and probably lose my train of thought!)

{In early 2008, Linkletter suffered a mild stroke. He died on May 26, 2010 at age 97 at his home in Bel Air, Los Angeles, California.} Well, that clears that up.

I used to buy his books, but I have since given them all away.  I suggest you check online and either buy one, or check one out at your local library.  You will be in stitches.  But back to the intent of this blog.

A brief history of my life for anyone not knowing me well.  I have 5 kids , 4 of which were born over the span of 5 years, one being born 3 years later.  When I was 50, my husband and I adopted one of the grandsons.  He is now grown and I have a grandson who is almost 4 years old.  In a perfect world he would be my great grandson, but it is what it is.  He spends one night a week with me and goes to preschool at my church's day care and preschool.  He has learned a lot and that night and 2 days that he is with me has taught me why God gives us kids when we are young.

The point of this is that by raising my kids and working I missed a lot of the cute little things they said and did.  Now that I am old, my powers of observation have developed to the point that I can actually interact with a little kid and appreciate their minds.  Jiraiya is no exception.  Potty training was something I had forgotten.  Seemed like I just took my kids out of diapers and into little bitty underwear, but it must have been more than that.  When the process with him became full blown he would suddenly call out "  I gotta' go poop!  Want to watch?"  And proud grandma would.

The phone was something he was never fond of talking on, until now.  No more conversations with daddy without conversation with him.  He tells me what the dogs are doing.  What the rabbits are doing.  And he always says "I love you gramma."  He actually looks forward to our time together.

The point I am getting to is that he now has reasoning powers.  He now wants the dog to ride in the back seat with him.  OK.  Yesterday we went to Walmart and I bought him 5 finger puppets.  He watched youtube on the kids channel and when he saw them he sang the whole song for me and everyone in Walmart, "Daddy finger, daddy finger! Where are you?  Here I am , here I am! How do you do? "  All the way through , mommy finger, brother finger, sister finger, baby finger.

We had some time to kill so I thought I would visit the ARC, so I pulled in and parked.  When I went to get him out of the car seat he very matter of fractally said
" I will just wait here."
"No, you have to go with me.  I want to buy a dress."
"I will be fine, gramma"

He was so grown up that I gave up on the ARC visit since I really did not want to kill time (or buy a dress) and got in and started the car.

"Gramma!  I want you to get your dress."  The point of this is first that he thinks he is old enough to be left alone in a car in a parking lot.  And secondly, he remembered that I said I wanted to buy a dress.  The whole conversation was very mature and well thought out.

I am sure my kids and I had conversations that were burned in my mind, and they do pop out from time to time.  I do remember some of them, but there is nothing that will give you a wake up call like carrying on a two sided conversation with a kid 75 years younger than you!  They are so innocent in the ways of the world.

So, anyway, Happy Thanksgiving!  And remember to give the good Lord thanks for the bounty and thank the Indigenous People for giving up the land so we could have what we wanted!

Where do I stand on the presence of a nut in the white house?

Let me be very clear on this one.  This is MY country too.  As a christian I am pretty sure the devil incarnate is holding sway in our nations capitol.  At no point in time have I thought for one minute that he and all his cohorts are doing anything that is going to help me or my causes one bit.  Not one iota.  There was a time when I would have researched all the candidates and made an informed choice, but after seeing the way the Republicans in both the Senate and the House have sucked up to the big orange orangutan that is called our leader I would not vote for a Republican if he were handing out million dollar bags of money on the corner by my house.  Not only would I not vote for one, if my "friends" profess to be followers of the current administration they are out the door.  I refuse to break bread or sip the cup with anyone who finds humor and justice in what this administration is doing to immigrants, poor, homeless, gay, bisexual, black, Hispanic,  women, medicaid recipients, food stamp recipients, and the list goes on and on and on.

Further let me state that the idiot in Washington who brags about "grabbing a woman by the pussy," would be well advised to not try grabbing this woman by anything because it would be the last thing he ever grabbed.  It turns my stomach when I see the women standing around him as he signs into law an edict that takes away their rights as women.  There seems to be no middle ground with this government.  Try to remember that I lived through the time period where women went from being chattel to being productive members of society.  I was there for integration.  I saw the assassination of Martin Luther King, JFK, Robert Kennedy.  I missed the part where our government seized the land and sent the Indians to reservations in the middle of nowhere, but I did work in a bar where it was illegal to sell liquor to Indians and I was there when they were no longer "Indians", but became Indigenous People.  Discrimination by any other name is still discrimination!

At his point in time my news feeds are flooded with pictures of babies being ripped from their parents arms and warehoused in Walmart warehouses.  Of course, those people have no maternal or paternal feelings and the babies are not really human like the babies of the lily white guards ripping them from the only security they have known.  Your president, because he sure as hell is not mine, is snuggled up with the North Korean dictator and throwing kisses at the despot that is in control of Russia.  We march.  We wave our flags.  We write letters and we might as well be wiping our asses on them.  Where is America's outrage?  I have signed so many calls to "Impeach Trump NOW!" that those keys on my keyboard will no longer work.

The only hope we have is with our vote.  If you are going to the polls and vote in the same ilk that made this maniac what he is today then I would wish you would just stay home.  If your goal is to "split the vote" or vote for one of the yoyo's that follows this joke of a president, I would wish you would just stay home.  Of course if you are unemployed, you might want to vote for him because, and trust me when I say this, the federal government will soon be hiring for devoted people to man their ovens.

It was a black and white world back there on Strong Street.

I see the news and it makes me sick.  We are consumed with fear and hatred of the "Radical Islamic Terrorist," the illegal immigrants, the gays, the blacks, and God only knows who else that we are killing  in the name of "peace and tranquility."  My dying ass!

We have elected a man to the white house who embodies all the hatred rolled into one ball and he does it in the name of "Keeping America Great."  I ask you just how great we are now?  And when I say "we elected,"  I mean just that.  Everyone that cast a "protest vote" or skipped voting because it "really doesn't count", or worse yet, the ones who actually marked a vote for a man who spews hate through every pore got us where we are right now!  Blame it on Russia if you so choose, but had we been United as we claim, they could not have gotten their foot in the door.

When Donald Trump was spewing his hate and "Lock her up!" rhetoric I, like most other Americans, just chalked that up to showmanship and politics as usual.  The majority of American's laughed at his antics knowing that no way would he be elected.  But the electoral college bit us in the fanny  And little did I realize the fact that this world is filled with frustration and hate that is mostly directed at our governement.  This and the fact that church attendance has fallen to a new low tells me we have a real problem  Back in Nickerson we hid our heads in the sand.

Oh, I knew that there was a "colored family" that lived outside of town some where, but we never saw them.  We also knew the Klu Klux Klan operated every where.  I never actually saw any cross burnings, but a small town is good for gossip.  I never really knew who was in the Klan and at one point I thought probably my dad was.  Seems he had a rather colorful past that was tied to the Chicago mafia, but like I said....

My mother was probably the hardest working, most honest, and kindest woman who ever graced this earth and she taught me well.

If someone is hungry, feed them.

I someone is thirsty, give them a drink.

If you find something valuable on the ground, it is still not yours.

A lie is a lie.

Some women are just born to be old maids.

Some men are just "momma's boys."

We are all the same color when the lights are out.

Most of her wisdom could be dispensed in a sentence of less than 10 words.  No sense spewing out a bunch of useless words that no one was gonna remember no how!  Gotta love my momma!

But back to my rant of today.  I live in the county where all the gardens are.  Beautiful Mesa!  In the summer the fields are alive with workers picking the crops.  On a 100 degree day I see them in thier long sleeved shirts and pants with hoods over thier heads.  They keep thier bodies covered to keep the hot sun off of thier skin.  I need shade and a breeze when I am outside.  Inside I need my central air. They move across fields in tandem and behind them the fields are empty and beside them the trucks are full of green peppers, buckets of tomatoes and bags of onions.  A sight to behold and the graneries are full.

Well, that is how it is supposed to work.  But this year is different.  I see Black SUV's driving the back roads.  I see no workers in the fields.  I see crops going to seed and not being harvested.  Way to go America!  This will teach Mexico that we mean business!  This will show them! This will teach them to take our jobs!

Sorry folks, not seeing it here.  I do not see any of the locals out there bent over picking me a carrot.  Not happening.  I do think a few of the locals may have went out to make some of that "easy money" but they aren't going back.  It is sad that the system that has worked for so many years for both farmers and workers is no longer happening. 

I hear the arguments that by taking down statues we are rewriting history.  I do not see it that way.  As far as I am concerned, the rebel flag waving off some rednecks truck is a flagrant reminder that we had to fight a war with our neighbors to free human beings from the yoke of slavery.  Ever study how this came about in the first place?  In nutshell, a bunch of rich men needed workers and needed them cheap, so they went to Africa to capture black people that were not doing anything anyway to come and live over here and work for room and board.  Far be it from their little pea brains to think perhaps that property they now owned had a mother, father, siblings, wife, husband, children or anything that mattered.  Not a pretty sight and I am pretty sure that they do not need to see a bunch of statues, flags or anything else to remind them.  Much like a statue of Hitler in the town square is not something any of us intelligent people need to remember the Holocaust.

Does anyone remember back when Vietnam was happening and we had all those refugees?  Different

nationality, same reception.  America has always been a melting pot, so to speak, but we tend to forget that our ancestors were the first to be integrated in this land!  The people that were here when we landed on Plymouth Rock are the only ones that really belong here.  Call them Native Americans, Indigenous people, Redskins, or Indians they are the real owners of this land.  Sadly they made one mistake.  They took pity on the pious immigrants who came here on the Mayflower to make a new life.  They fed them.  They helped them survive the elements of a brutal winter in a strange land.  Then they were killed by them.  Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!

America, the land of the free and the home of the brave.  Sometimes I am just not as proud of America as I should be, but then I remember!  I can only control the thoughts and actions of one person and that is me!  So I shall take my optimistic little self and keep waving my banner and hearing the chants that have been echoing down through the years. 

"Remember Stonewall!"  "Hell no! We won't go!"  "Black or White, all is right!"  And all the ones I have forgotten. 

GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

My corner of the world is getting smaller.

I woke up this morning in my little bed and lay there for a minute to think about the day ahead.  First I thought about all the shootings and the riots and it made me very sad.  I thought back to when God first made this earth and how perfect it was.  He just wanted companionship and Adam and Eve gave him that, but in typical fashion, they wanted more.  Or at least Eve did.  From the apple to Cain and Able was just a short hop and from there to now it has been all down hill.  Brad and Angelina are divorcing and if I click enough keys I can get all the dirt on that but I really don't care.  Oklahoma is arresting a police officer, but it does not change anything.  The man is still dead whether or not it was intentional or just an honest mistake, his life is gone.

The "Indigenous Tribes" are trying to stop a pipeline.  I can remember when they were Indians and they lived on reservations that were theirs given to them by our Government in exchange for all the rest of the whole United States that they thought was theirs.  What happened to that?  Oh, we needed oil.  Now I remember.  Fossil fuel is what makes our world turn.  We can get wind and solar power, but that is too clean and we will always have wind and sun, or so we think.  What I want to know is why it is only the people on the reservation trying to save our planet?  Why aren't all of us outraged that our government is completely ignoring the fact that this is THEIR land and not ours.  We only have this one earth and unless someone knows something I don't, we need to preserve it and water is just pretty necessary in that equation.

Wars are raging around the world and I have no idea why.  Wait, yes I do.  War is a matter of one person or nation imposing their will and beliefs on another person or nation.  Both sides think they are right.  For some reason our great land seems to think it is our business.  Babies are being aborted and children die from child abuse here in our country on a daily basis.  Animals are mistreated and left on chains to suffer in the back yard of a master who has no heart.  Homeless people beg for a crumb and a blanket to stave off the cold while our city fathers burn their cardboard shacks. 

Where are our peacekeepers?  Where are our Mother Teresa's?  Where are our people who care about our brothers and sisters?  Why is skin color even an issue?  Why is an accent even an issue?  Who is right and who is wrong and what difference does it make in the grand scheme of things?  But wait!  There is hope!

I remember somewhere in the far recesses of my mind a glimpse of news that a huge asteroid or something like that is hurling through space and will most assuredly crash into our dear mother earth.
Think about that!  Will it knock us out of our orbit and send us flying through space with no gravity to keep us implanted on our Terra firma?  It could happen and then would the size of your bank account make a difference?  Would your opinions matter?  Could your friends save you?  Can your fancy BMW go fast enough to save you from the apocalypse that is sure to follow?  Just some thoughts this morning.

Welcome to my world!