Thursday, January 28, 5:15 PM So now what do I do?

I have calendars all over the place.  I even have one on my desk top computer that dings to remind me I have something to do.  Usually I have a vague idea anyway, but a little reminder is always nice in case I get a tad bit forgetful.  I know I am supposed to meet up with Kenna this morning.  She will give me a call at some point after her doctor's appointment.  Wednesday is open for the time being, but Thursday is a mystery.  Written on the back of the ONA paper is a notation  "Thursday, January 28, 5:15 PM".   That is all I have written and that meeting was last night.  No name.  No place.  No dress code.  Nada.

I have asked everyone I can think of if they have any idea what that is about and of course there is more blank looks then I can tell you.  They are actually all blank looks.  I look at them with a blank look and they return a blank look.   So, I am appealing to anyone who reads this to call me immediately if I am meeting you on Thursday.

Oh, crap!  I remember seeing an advertisement that shows an appointment like that only it said "Fred's heart attack will happen tomorrow at 3:15."  Wonder if that is my wake up call and I wonder if I better go get some of that medicine?

I have a dentist appointment someday, but that is not it.  Doctor is once a year and always the first one of the day.  I do not usually go anywhere after 4:00 cause I have chores to do.  All I can say is "Damn it all to hell!!"

I had a lady friend tell me the other day that she thought she needed a keeper.  I told her I could be her keeper and that would be like the blind leading the blind.  Maybe I need a keeper or at least some sort of an overseer.

So here is the deal...If you are reading this and plan on seeing me at 5:15 on Thursday, call me so I know where I am going.  Ask your friends also.  If we all put our heads together maybe we can come up with something.  In the meantime, I shall go look at that piece of paper some more.  I may take a nap!  Oh, maybe I will bake a pie.  Or cookies!  Oh, look...a butterfly.

Colonoscopy? Thank M#$%*@o!!

Yesterday was the annual March Against Monsanto.  All over the country people who care came together and carried signs protesting what is going on with our food supply.  Our demonstation was not very well attended and at first that made me angry.  Then I rethought it and I have decided that perhaps anger is not the right emotion.  Disappointment?  Maybe, but not really.  After much soul searching I put my finger on it.  It is Fear.  It is fear for not just myself, but the whole country.  Let's review here.

Most of my friends do not recall the "good old days" like I do.  I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and restroom facilities consisted of an "outhouse" and Saturday night was bath night in the kitchen in a galvanized tub that Momma filled with water heated on a wood stove, which was also used for cooking.  Meat was a rarity on our table, but when it showed up it had usually been walking or hopping around in the back yard earlier in the day.  And we picked greens out of the yard.  We ate Lambs Quarter.  Ever hear of that?  A weed.  Our animals were fed grain that had been fed raised in some farmers field and harvested by that same farmer.  It was delivered to our place by wagon.

There was not much sickness in our small town.  There was one lady who kept having tests and more tests and the tests found nothing.  She had a hysterectomy, an appendectomy, tonsillectomy  and finally just died.  There was also a young man who set in a wheel chair in front of his house and smiled and waved every morning before school and every afternoon after school.  I forget what he had, but we knew he was not well.  He died when he was 14 or so.  But for the most part babies were born, grew up, and moved away.  The old people stayed behind and eventually died and that was that.  The flu went around and we survived. 

Then came polio.  Then a vaccine to control that.  A vaccine for small pox.  Want to know a secret?  I was very puny when I was pre-teen, so I never had those vaccinations.  No polio, no whooping cough, no small pox, no tetenaus, no nothing.  Still have not had them, do not want them and have survived just fine without them.

Then I noticed people coming down with one thing or another.  I was 15 years old before I had the sign of a boob or hair under my arms.  But I noticed my kids were alost fully developed by the time they were 12 and now it seems to be 8 or 9.  What is going on?  My first thought was growth hormones in the meat we eat and the milk we drink.  Everyone thought I was nuts.  Oh, well.  You explain it.

Then I found out little bits of info here and there that disturbed me.  Our fruits and vegetables are radiated so they stay fresher for us and can last longer on the grocery store shelf!  Every thing that comes off the shelf also has a preservative in it.  Buy a loaf of bread.  Bake a loaf of bread.  Put the 2 items on your kitchen counter and walk away.  Two weeks later the store loaf will still be there, nice and fresh.  The one you baked will be consumed by mold and unrecognizeable as anything edilbe.  Scary, huh?

No!  What is scary is what the government that is supposed to protect us is doing to us in the name of progress.  A company named M#$%*@o, the one that invented agent Orange for use as a defoliant in Vietnam came up with a way to "improve" our food supply.  Just alter a few genes in the DNA of and they will be grow very big, very fast.  Plants will be able to kill insects from within.  One bite and the worm in your corn hemmorages and dies.  I have been known to eat 3 ears of corn.  What do you think that does to you?

Do me a favor.  You apparently have a computer and Google is all over the Internet.  Google GMO.  Google World's Highest Cancer Rate.  And if you only do one, cut and paste this one.  Which countries DO NOT allow Genetically Modified  Organics.

The point I am trying to get across to you, my friends, is this:  Educate yourselves.  It is your body.  You decide what goes in it.  Big business has bought and paid for our government.  If you think about it, you know I am right.  Congress keeps passing laws to protect those who pollute our food supply.  Think about our last election.  We had a measure on the ballot to make companies label our foods.  What happened?  Big money came in and ran a campaign aimed at your pocket book.  

"If we have to label our products you will have to pay more at the store."  That is a crock!  Food has to be labeled any way, we just want it HONEST!

"Oh, us small farmers will be put out of business."  Of course you will when we find out what you are doing to us!

And last but not least, why do out of state businesses care what goes on in our state?  Is it personal?  Hell no!  Oh, wait.  It is personal.  Personal to thier bank accounts.  Please, if you do nothing else all day, spend just a little time researching your food supply and finding out why the medical problems in our country are spiraling out of control.  

And on a brighter note, our crowd was younger this year.  It is too late for us old people to save our colon, but if we can save the children, there is still hope.  This little fellow made this sign while we were standing on the corner waving at people going by and honking.  OMG! GMO!

Spring, Sprang, Sprung!

I have a total of 10 Lilac bushes around my house and yard and every one of them looks like this.  They are loaded with blooms and the beauty is surpassed only by the wonderful fragrance of the Lilac.  I do know that the correct conjugation is not spring, sprang, sprung and that by so doing I have changed a noun to a verb, but Spring does that to me.

I understand that we are supposed to have snow today and this will not be the first time my Lilac's have peeked through the cold and frozen white blanket to cheer my day.  April is probably my favorite month simply because of the Lilac's.  Purple is my favorite color and Lilac is my favorite fragrance, so there you go.

I like to think that in another life I would have been a Lilac.  They are strong and can withstand about any condition:  below zero weather to a hot dry summer.  They do like sunshine and will struggle when planted in a shady place and wither and die in the dark.  Much like me.   

I am going to cut a bouquet of these and bring them in the house, but only because I have so many.  I do not like cut flowers because it breaks my heart to watch them die in a vase, but I only get to see these when I go outside and they make me so happy.  I can set on the deck in the evening and lose myself in beautiful dreams with the Lilac fragrance drifts through my reverie.

So, I guess you get the idea that I am maybe a little fond of Lilac's?  I know Spirea will be blooming soon or may have already bloomed, but it has no smell and the flowers are tiny so I over planted on the Lilac bushes.  

The day calls me, so off I go.  You have a good day and remember to stop and smell the flowers along life's pathway!

The day is finally here!

http://alongthemalecon.blogspot.com

I was so excited to see on the news yesterday that Cuba is once more open to us.  My God!  I can remember way back in the dim recesses of my mind when the embargo was placed on Cuba.  I go to the store and find "Made in China", "made in Mexico",  "Made in Taiwan".  I watch the shows on child labor in these countries and hear the atrocities that go on inside these borders and then look at a country 90 miles off our coast that has been ostracized for 50 years and I do not even remember what they did.
I do know that when Sherman was alive he wanted a real Cuban cigar.  Just one before he died.  I do not remember how much that cost on the black market.  Oh, wait.  That is not illegal any more, is it?  And these buses loaded with medical and educationnal materials aren't either, are they?

I do not even remember when this picture was taken.

I see we are releasing 3 prisoners.  There were 5.  The Cuban 5.  I assume that a couple of them could have died.  I will need to look into that.  

But for now, it is enough that we are finally after 53 years doing something.  I am glad Allan Gross is home.  I am glad that the Cuban cigar is now resting in it's place of honor in St. Louis.  I am also very happy that my friends, Amy and Bernardo can now go "home" for a visit.

Peace!!!!!!!!!

Back to the good old days where I am safe!

I like it back here when I was still at home and mom and dad were the adults.  Mostly mom.  Dad hung out in the pool hall every day.  This was a place where the old men stopped in to play dominoes and shoot the breeze.  I think they might have sold beer there because us kids were not allowed to go in the place unless it was an emergency and there better be blood involved and it better be squirting. And there must have been a pool table or why else would it be called a "pool hall"?
He was paid a stipend by the man who owned it and he was also allowed to drink coffee or something.  Dad had given up drinking by the time we left the Ailmore place.  Something about alcohol poisoning, some body's husband and God only knew what else.  Oh, he still had the occasional "hot toddy"  which was made with corn liquor, sugar and hot water, but that was only for his cold which he had a lot of colds back then.
On one side of the "pool hall" was the city jail.  It was a small concrete structure about 10' x 10'.  I understand there was a cot in there and bars to keep the miscreant on that side of the room.  I am not sure anyone was every put in there, but I heard stories.  If you spit on the sidewalk, you would go to jail.  If you said a cuss word where a lady could hear you, you went to jail.  (Now I do not know just what yard stick was used to decide who was a lady and who wasn't, but I heard plenty of cuss words and no one was ever arrested on my behalf!)  If you were falling down drunk and making lots of noise, off to the hoosegow with you!  Mostly I just remember the "peace officer"  sitting on a chair in front of the jail some times.  Not very often and I do not remember his name, but he was skinny.
A side story here and then back to Main Street.  Up the street from us lived Jake Smith, who was a retired peace officer.  He showed us the badge and it said "Jake Smith, peace officer."  He also showed us a gun.  It was a pistol and had a very long barrel.  I could not sleep for many nights after that because it was very scary to think that a gun with real bullets was on the same street where I lived.  Jake Smith liked to sit in his front yard on a wooden chair which was leaned back against a tree.  He fell asleep most afternoons and Jake and one of his buddies took a rope and tied him to the tree while he was asleep.  He could be heard cussing away when he woke up to his dilemma!  He never figured out just who was responsible, but he had a pretty good idea.  Back to Main Street.
On the other side of the pool hall was Coringtons Dry Good.  Might have been Woringtons, I am no longer sure.  One wall was bolts of fabrics and things needed to sew.  There were dishes, pots and pans, linens, clothes, coats, tea towels, shoes, tools, nails,and on and on. Mrs. Corington ran the store and she was a buxom lady who never had a hair out of place.  She used to watch us with her arms folded across her chest and I always had the feeling that if I touched anything she would rap my knuckles with a steel rod that she had hidden some place on her person.  I remember how proud I was when I finally had $4.00 to buy a pair of boots that were in the window for years.  They had fur around the top.  These were real boots and not  galoshes.  Galoshes were black and had buckles.  These just slid on my feet over my shoes.
The library was on the corner.  There were many shelves of books and that was heaven for me.  Reading was my escape back then.  I remember how proud I was when I found a book titled Bartholomew Cubbins and the 100 Hats.  Or something along that line.  There were books with pictures albiet black and white mostly, but still pictures!  National Geographic had naked women in it sometimes, but we were not allowed to check those out.  As I recall, that is where I first found Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House on the Prairie series.  I read all the books she wrote and worshipped her, well right up until the series came on tv and for some reason I could not stand the innocent little wretch who played Laura in the series.  Forgot her name.
My Antonia by Willa Cather was another, but that was a tad bit racy for my young mind and I am not sure the librarian even let me check that out.  Back in those days the librarian was always an old maid and she stayed in the back with a curtain for a door.  Not sure she lived there, but if she did I am sure she lived alone.  They were also called "spinsters".  I did not want to be a spinster, I was sure of that!
On the corner going towards the school was the grocery store and drug store.  Drug store had a soda fountain and if we had a few extra cents we could get a cherry coke or a vanilla phosphate, whatever that was.  Ingalls candy store and school supplies as on the same side of the street, but a block up. They had a candy counter and a counter where you could get a cold drink or ice cream.  The cold drink was always in a bottle and ice cream was in a bowl.  Mother always took me there after a trip to the doctor.  I was very puny when I was a little girl.  Tonsils were my problem.
Well, I have to go to the Springs today, so I need to get around.  Much as I hate to leave Main Street, I must.  Rest assured I will be back!

Hey, here we are last Thursday!

Went to the Faith Leaders in Action Press Conference in partnership with Together Colorado last Thursday at noon.  Ran into several people I knew and met a very nice lady.  I forgot my camera because 30 minutes earlier I was still in my jammies!  Oh, hell!  I am supposed to be some where else.  So I tossed on something that was not jammies and ran to town.  So back to the nice lady.

Her name is Janet Wallis Altmann and she had her camera.  She said I should feel free to steal pictures from her facebook page, so that is where this came from.  She is with the Pueblo Latino Democratic Forum and she said I could join even though I am not Latino, so I figure to look into that very soon.  If someone as nice as Janet is in charge, I want to be there.  And I am a Democrat.  And a liberal and short.

So this picture is one I lifted from her album.  On the left is the Reverend John Mark Hild  of the Metropolitan Church.  The couple in the center are David and Margaret Barber from the Christ Congregational United Church of Christ in Belmont.  And I am on the right representing First Congregational United Church of Christ  in the Mesa Junction area.  Steve Parke played his guitar and we all sang.  Let me see if I can steal his picture.

Ah!  There he is!  I am getting quite adept at stealing other people's work.  I just love to sing along with Steve.  Every where I go, he is around some where and we manage to hit a note or two.  Makes me feel so special.  So the reason we were here today was to present a united front in asking that we could actually talk to the gun advocates on a level ground without all the emotion.  Doesn't seem like too unreasonable to ask that.  But it was a lovely moment.

Reverend  Dr. Neema  Caughran presented two lovely sentiments, one from Ghandi and one from Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. which were both lovely.  My little mind did not retain the words, but they gave me peace and in this world of anger and incivility  for what more can I hope ?  Little peace of mind here and a few kind words there is what makes the world go around. 

So to my new friend who lets me steal pictures and my friend Neema who gives me peace of mind, I send a big thank you and say to the readers of mine who read this blog, be kind to each other, and remember, You can not sprinkle showers of happiness on other people without getting a few drops on yourself.