The black cows are back!

I guess Spring must be around the corner.  On my way into town yesterday I spotted the first calf.  Seems like they are a little late this year, but it is probably just that my memory is rather slipping.  I did see one little calf, but it was still laying in the field.  Soon there will be lots of the little fellows.  I would love to be able to delude myself into believing that maybe this year they will be allowed to stay together, but you and I both know better than that.  The best I can hope for is that some nice man will buy the calves and raise them to adulthood, but that is not happening.  Until some one proves me wrong, I will know that these calves are born for veal.

I gave up eating veal many years ago when I learned how it is made.  They take baby calves and put them in a very small space so they can not move.  Then they are fed nothing but milk.  This makes them very tender and it is the end result that matters, not how happy a baby calf's life is.  

This is from wikipedia, in case you think I am dreaming this up.  

Veal - Wikipedia

Jump to Cruelty to calves - Calves are slaughtered as early as 2-3 days old (at most 1 month old) yield meat carcasses weighing from to 9 to 27kg. Formula-fed ("Milk Fed", "Special Fed" or "white") veal. Calves are raised on a fortified milk formula diet plus solid feed. The majority of veal meat produced in the US are from milk-fed calves.

‎Definitions and types · ‎Culinary uses · ‎Production · ‎Animal welfare

I see stuff like this and I wonder why I am not a vegan.  I never thought about this until I researched veal.  My daughter raises cattle in Eastern Kansas and last year one of her cows gave birth and then died of milk fever leaving the calf to be bottle fed by my daughter until it was big enough to butcher.  I could not, personally eat anything that I had grown to love, but her reasoning is it makes her happy raising the little calf and then makes her happy again when the calf feeds her.  I guess this is why I have 8 geese out back that are so old they can hardly walk and I feed them every day.  I spend $32.00 a month on goose food. That is a total of $384 a year.  8 geese dressed out would produce 24 pounds of meat.  This is equal to $16.00 a pound.  I have had then 14 years so that makes one pound of goose meat cost $224.  

Beats hell out of me how I got on this tangent, but I am now a mathmetician!  I do know I just wanted to share with you about the little calves.  Farming is a hard life and I guess it takes a special breed to raise food to be eaten.  I am not cut from that pattern, so I will go scramble an egg for breakfast.  Years ago I did raise a couple pigs out back and that was some of the best pork I ever bit into.  I was hard hearted back then, I think.  Now I am old and I am a softie!  I do kill centipedes if they dare to come in the house.  I do not eat them.

Have a good day!

I might marry a goose!

Pueblo is fairly moderate so the Canadian Geese do not really migrate.  In the morning they fly east and in the evening they fly west.  Geese are very interesting creatures in that when feeding about one of every five geese is a "guard goose", meaning that while the flock feeds on fallen grain, the guard geese are alert to their surroundings.  If a dog were to come close, they would alert the flock and they would fly away.

Another interesting fact is that if one goose is injured in flight, two geese go down with the injured goose to stay with it until it is either dead or healed enough to fly.  At that point the tree geese will either join another flock or find their own flock.

The flock flies in a "V" formation.  The goose on the point of the "V" tires easily.  When it is tired it drops back to the rear of the formation and the goose behind the falling leader moves forward and takes its place.

These are my geese back in the days when they had babies.  My geese can not fly, but they behave much like the wild geese in the sense that the whole flock raises the babies.  If a cat came around when they were in the yard, the adults would surround the babies and hiss at the intruder.  It was always interesting to watch.  Sadly my geese are very old and while they still lay eggs they are not fertile.  I kind of miss the babies in the spring time.

I would like to go on record as saying my geese were very good parents, but they did let me touch and hold the young geese.  The brown geese in the picture are African Grays.  I am sure they are descended from the Canadian Geese.  Domesticated geese such as the African Grays, Chinese and Emidens can not fly.  It is the same with domesticated ducks.  The only domesticated duck that can fly, to my best knowledge is the Muscovy.  Muscovy Ducks are also warblers which means they talk.  Sounds like a bunch of kids twittering.

Well, it is getting late so I better bid you good night and wander off to bed.  My geese are all shut up in the goose house and safe from scary stuff so we can all sleep tonight knowing that the Canadian Geese out in the field are taking care of each other. 

Wish more people were as considerate of each other as the geese are!

Shades of Jim Jones

The following is my opinion and only my opinion.  I think I still have the right to state my opinion.  Maybe not.

How many years ago was it that Jim Jones and his 909 followers drank the Koolaid in Jonestown, Guyana?  I was still living on McClelland so it must have been in about 1978.  I recall that  when I told my kids about it they thought I had made it all up, just to scare them.  I was trying to instill in them the need to think for themselves and not just be  followers.  As I watched the Senate vote against  the impeachment of the Donald Trump, I could not help but remember Jonestown.  The Senate drank the Koolaid.  I refuse to do that.  Donald Trump is the very epitome of evil.  He is a bully.  He is a selfish narcissist. He set about destroying anything Obama did, simply because he is a racist.

My mother was a Republican.  I think my whole family was.  Kansas is Republican country and I think when I registered it was as a Republican.  After coming to Colorado, I registered Independent.  I am now Democrat.  I loved Obama, but I also loved the older George Bush.  I did not vote for Bill Clinton. but I did vote for Hillary because I felt evil coming from Trump.  I was right.

I do not know how any person in their right mind can condone what is going on at our borders with the children taken away for their parents.  Our school system is in shambles.  Medical costs and insurance continue to skyrocket.  I could go on with all the crap that this administration has caused, but I will just cut to the heart of the matter.

Trump has his whole family working in government.  That is nepotism.  He uses Marlargo  to pad his coffers while still not showing a tax return.  You try that!  While I set here in my house trying to keep warm and still pay the gas bill, he revels in his warmth and is surrounded by body guards that are paid with my money to keep him safe.

Life is not fair.  There are the haves and the have nots and we are the have nots.  I see the smirking face of Mitch McConnell and it makes me sick.  He said before the impeachment vote that the Republican Senators would NOT convict no matter what the evidence said.  Doesn't that tell you something?  I am proud of Nancy Pelosi for trying and I am proud of Mitt Romney for voting yes.  I am disappointed that the rest of the Republicans caved to a thug who calls himself our leader.  If this is the mark of a leader we are all in trouble.

So, rest assured, I will still do all I can to survive.  It is sad that he does not have to pay taxes and I set here with my social security in jeopardy.  These are my golden years.  These are the years I should be taking a cruise.  Instead I plan my grocery list with prudence and eat the cheaper foods because that is what I can afford.

In closing, I want to say if you are offended by this blog, hit the block button, or if on facebook, unfriend me.  I will not argue with you about right and wrong on this matter.  Keep it to yourself.  I do not need Trump followers telling me how good I have it.  Screw you!

Never let your right hand know what your left hand is doing,

My mother always said that to me.  I do not know how many times that has popped into my head in my lifetime.  When I was younger and sometimes thought of doing something that I knew was wrong, that would run through my mind.  Try as I might, I could never make it work.  I fell in with a girl who shoplifted.  Sadly, her mother had taught her how.  I thought that was sad, but here was a mother who explained that the stores had lots of money, lots of products and they would never miss just one, or two.  I never asked my mother if this was right or wrong, but I did reason that if my right hand did not know what my left hand was doing that it was alright.  And her mother was an adult and adults knew stuff.

Sadly, her father also made homebrew and stored it in the cellar with the door wide open.  I think I was probably 16 at the time.  It was after I had lived with my grandma so I did not feel as connected to my family as I probably should have.  Grandma had died.  Great Grandma had moved to Southwest Kansas with her daughter and I was just sort of cut adrift.  So I was easy prey for someone who showed me a little attention.  My friends father always went to Hutch to gamble on the weekends, so the cellar was free game for whatever we wanted to do, which was to get drunk.  Get drunk and steal stuff.  I probably spent a year or so in that rut before I decided that it was a dead end party.

Time passed and I married, became a mother, divorced, remarried, and divorced several more times.  Some  where along the years I decided to pull my head out of my ass and become a decent human being.  I also became independent and learned to think for myself.  Stealing was wrong.  Drinking to oblivion was wrong.  Lying was wrong.  Hard work and honesty became a mantra that I was comfortable with and rather enjoyed.  I had always known about God and was baptized when I was 12 years old.  Looking back over my life I decided that I actually needed to wash all the sin away again.  So I did.

Now, the secrets I keep are just between me and God and they are mostly good ones.  I sometimes hand  money to someone just because.  My car is usually full of stuff to take to the migrant center.  When I buy groceries I purchase extra for the food banks around town.  I like to visit with the homeless.  I would bring them home with me, but I am afraid my kids would commit me.  I keep secrets from myself.  I just think that "but for the grace of God, there goes me."

My life is good.  My finances are fairly stable and I am mostly happy.  Sometimes I wonder just where this will all end.  Hopefully I can just not wake up some morning.  I do not want to get old and senile.  I do not want to have my diaper changed by one of my kids, but I guess what ever will be will be.  You know, the "Que sera, sera" thing.

As I set here at my desk, I have a cat on my lap, a dog at my feet and a cup of cold coffee to sip from.  Yep, life is good!  

Spring time will soon be here....again...Thank God!

I have been in this house for 36 years and I have fought the bind weed every step of the way.  Elm trees are my nemesis, especially when they grow in the fence line or sprout up in the middle of the Choke Cherry bushes.  But last year, I noticed that I am now blessed with cacti.  They are the flat leafed ones and I forget what they are called, but they have that fruit on the end of the leaf.  Prickly Pear.  I first encountered this little fellow 50 years ago when I lived out by the airport in Garden City, Kansas.  We had friends named Don and Claire .  She was of Mexican descent and wise in the ways of foraging for delicacies.  She came by one day and told me she found a field of Prickly Pear Cacti and wanted to go harvest some of the new tender leaves for food.

Since Duane was at work, I agreed and we loaded the kids up and away we went.  Oh, and I took a pair of Duane's leather gloves because she told me they were deadly sharp and we would need them.  So we picked a big basket full and then went home.  Since I had no idea what they were I let her take all of them with the promise that she would fix something really good to eat.  I carefully put his leather gloves back where I got them.  Bad mistake.

The first time he put them on he began to cuss.  They were full of something very sharp.  Oh, oh!  I of course confessed and I know they say confession is good for the soul, but trust me, it was not good for the ears or the body.  I had ruined his good gloves for nothing!  He was not going to eat that damn cactus and that woman better not ever show up at our door again and Don was an idiot for ever marrying that piece of what ever.  Any way.

So imagine my surprise when I went out behind the garage  to the area that was home to 500 million goat heads and 300 Sunflowers and lots of bindweed and found the cutest little Prickly Pear Cactus.  I was tempted to just leave it grow, but thought better of that and got the shovel out.  I cut the root and tossed it into the milk crate.  Then I saw another.  And another.  And soon the big double milk crate was full.

The survivalist  in me rebels against killing anything be it a cactus or a big tall Sunflower.  I could eat the cactus if need be for survival and the birds could harvest the sunflowers.  The strangest part is that I see no signs of cactus growing any where and the field out back is planted sometimes to a cash crop, so I doubt it they worked their way in from there.



Another mystery is the Centipede and how it manages to slither in my house when there are no visible signs of cracks, but slither it does nonetheless.  That is second only to how the bull snake manages to get in the goose house and eat the eggs!  I have actually drilled holes in the eggs and blown them out so my daughter could paint them and it is no easy chore!  First it is way bigger than a snake mouth and the shell is very thick..



So I guess, my biggest problems out here on the Mesa are the snakes, cactii and the myriad of cats that now occupy the neighbors garage.  Guess I will just set right here and let it all sort itself out.  If this is the worst that happens to me, I guess I am pretty lucky!

A Front Row Seat!

I missed the Martin Luther King, Jr march yesterday.  Not sure what I was doing, but pretty sure it was important.  So today I will give you a glimpse into that time in my life.

In 1958, while I was 17 years old, I decided to take a "road trip".  Few people know this and even fewer care, but it was one of the most enlightening things I have ever done and probably did more to shape who I am today then a lot of things I have done.  It goes without saying that since I was 17 years old at the time, I was classified as a "juvenile runaway."  To make a long story short and to get to the heart of this blog, I will just say I ended up in jail in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Of course mother sent money for a bus ride home and I was damn glad to take that ride.

Have you ever been in jail?  It is no fun.  I was thrown into a room with a bunch of women who were very kind to me.  They were also, all white.  They talked to me about the error of my ways, and I could not help but agree with them.  All I wanted was to go home.   I quickly learned that there was another cell across the hall where the black women were kept.  Same separation for the men.  This was very strange to me.  When they transported me to the bus station, I learned that the rest rooms for the whites was one place and the ones for the blacks another.  They were very clearly marked "Whites Only" and "Negroes only".  Sadly the sigh did not say "Negroes", but a derogatory term.  Until that time, I had never known there was a differentiation for human beings.  I instinctively did not like it!

You must realize that I grew up in Nickerson, Kansas, and there were only white people there.  I can remember back in my far reaches of my mind talk I overheard about a cross burning outside of town.  I think my father may have taken part in that, because there had been a crowd of men and he seemed to know all about how it went down.  The family moved away right after that.  We moved to Hutchinson several years after that.  It was then that I saw what segregation really was.

Hutchinson, Kansas was divided into North and South with Sherman Street being the dividing line.    Blacks and Hispanics lived south of Sherman: Whites lived north of Sherman.  As the upper class, we were allowed to go to the south end, but they were not allowed north of the line. White people who chose to live South of the line were known as "white trash".  After a night of drinking, Jake and I would venture to South Plum and either eat at Betty's Fried Chicken, or a barbecue place, the name of which slips my mind right now.  We could do that because we were white.  White Privilege's were rampant back then.

The first signs of integration in the public work place happened in Hutchinson at the Landmark Hotel and Restaurant.  I do not remember the year but it seems like it was in the early 1960's.  They hired a black waitress and of course the citizenry were up in arms.  Not only was this woman working in a public place for all the world to see, but she dared to venture north of the Sherman Street line!  Sometimes we would park and just watch her working in there and carrying plates of food to the fine white people.  From our vantage point of the street, she did not appear to be "uppity", but in order to  judge her fairly, we would need to go in and actually order food and have her carry it to us.  But that was back in the day when any spare change was designated for the "beer joints" down on south Main!

  An aside here.  The biggest problem the beer joints on South Main seemed to have was the "Indians" who worked for the railroad.  They wanted to have a beer after work, but they were not allowed to do that because any fool knows "if you get them liquored up, they are going to kill us."  Kansas was pretty lily white back in those days.  White anglo saxon protestants were the chosen people.  Lucky for me!

Sadly, at that point in time drinking was far more important than eating, or standing up for the down trodden who had "chosen to be born black."  And mother corrected me on the use of the word " black".
"They are not black!  They are actually a very beautiful shade of brown."  However "Browns" was reserved for the people who had come up from Mexico.  Now be aware, that there were very few of them in my world!  And I am not sure they had come from Mexico, but we called them "Mexicans".

Now, you must realize here that I was growing up during this period of unrest and both Nickerson and Hutchinson,  Kansas were pretty well isolated from the unrest in the big cities.  By the time I figured out that there was a gulf between the rights of Negroes and Whites, it had diminished to a thin line.  After the election of some one's President (not mine) segregation has once more reared it's ugly head.  The same faction that follows this man refers to Obama as "that effen N#**@7."

So on this day after Marin Luther King, Jr's holiday, I reflect on the past.  For the record, I never participated in any hate marches.  I never called my black brothers and sisters by a derogatory name.  People are people in my world,  They are judged by the content of their hearts, not the color of their skin or which side of Sherman Avenue they lived  many years ago.

To this day I thank my God that I was born colorblind and raised by a mother who judged a man by the content of his soul and not the color of his skin.

"These truths we hold to be self evident, that all men are created equal." (Or something to that affect.)

Today is national hug your neighbor day, here at my house!



 

Finding Our Way; Moving Forward After the Death of a Husband.

The restaurant was the Three Thieves many years ago.  It was a favorite place for Kenny and I to have a dinner out at least once a month.  It had a notorious history as being the place where some guy had met with a hired assassin to plot the death of a business partner.  Sadly I do not remember the names, but it is all water under the bridge at this time as it was at that time.  We just loved a good steak and we could always get one there.  The salad was also to die for with the house dressing and Blue Cheese Crumbles.  I always had the baked potato and to me the skin is the best part!  Kenny always said only a glutton ate the skin.  His first wife told him that and he relayed the message to me, but I did not give a big rat's ass and I ate it!  He let me.

Last night I returned to what is now the Park East Restaurant for a dinner with six of my new found friends.  This is a very select group of women, but we all have one thing in common.  We have all lost our husbands and we all collaborated on a book put together by Beth Bricker Davis.  We each wrote our story of losing our husbands and moving forward alone.  We are an elite group only in that we are part of the book.  Each of our stories is unique, but each has the same beginning and ending.  There is no living happily in the real world.  Every day and every memory is ours, but they are all the same and the endings are the same.  We all go home alone to our respective homes with whatever life we live, but we all have our own memories of what was and will never be again.

I sat across from a lady named Marla Carleo.  Beside her was Shirley Higgins, who sometimes plays her Bass at our church. Next was Joyce Turbyfill and then Cathy  Trujillo was on the end.  On my side was me (Lou Mercer) followed by Beth Bricker Davis and then Alicia Bourdon-Goure.  Of the group, Alicia is the only one who has remarried.  I have tripped the light fantastic down the proverbial aisle 6 times, so I guess that is about it for me!

A toast to the success of our venture and then time to reminisce and catch up on each others lives.  Before last night, they were all just pages in the book.  Now we are forever held together by a bond forged by Beth Bricker Davis and a book that seems to be doing fairly well.  I am proud of Beth for coming up with this idea and then having the tenacity to bring out the best in all of us.  You do know that organizing a bunch of old widow women is akin to herding cats!

And we all  have our own copy of the book.  It is available on Amazon at click here.  Or you can buy it locally at Montgomery Steward on the end of Main Street right here in beautiful Pueblo, Colorado.

I do hope to maintain a friendship with these wonderful ladies.  We are now forever held together by a silvery cord that slips the bonds of earth.  I do hope you can pick up a copy of this because each experience is unique and while it can never make the death of a spouse easier, it can show that you are not alone.  

So, off to church I go this morning and I am going to thank that big ole' God up there for leading me out all alone last night, because that is something that I just do not do.  And while I hope you are never in my shoes, odds are you will be.  Just remember that out there in that big old world there are other people who have been there, done that.

May your path be sprinkled with sunshine and your nights filled with moonbeams! 

Buy book here!              (back row) Beth, Alicia, Marla, Shirley, (front row)Lou, Cathy, Joyce