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.

 

Testing one, two, three...

Ok, I think I   have found the address for the picasa slide show!  It is 5:15 in the morning so I am going to publish this one after while and see if it works.  This is the river by Sherman's house and I think it was taken the spring of 2012, but it might have been 2011.  Anyway, here it is!

 

A labor of love.

Got this link in an email today and I must confess it brought a tear to the old eye!  Back in 1983 Sherman Schroeder and two other fellows started a group called the British Motorcycle Association of Colorado.  These guys were not your run of the mill Harley riders.  They rode the bikes that were known as British, for whatever reason. 
When I met Sherman he was forever telling me about his Matchless, his Norton, his featherbed frame, his TT Special and I had no idea what he was talking about.  I was in his garage and all I saw was motorcycles in various states of repair or disrepair depending much on the eye of the beholder.  I , myself, thought it was a hell of a mess.  Then dear Sherman   was diagnosed with terminal cancer and I got the wake up call of my young life.
Mark Bosworth, a life long friend of Sherman's, came from St. Louis.  He had a pickup and a trailer and in the trailer was a Norton motorcycle that Sherman had ridden 30 years earlier.  It was restored to pristine condition by Mark.  He had even gone so far as to have decals painted because they did not make the decals anymore.  Sherman was tickled to death.  I have a picture on my desk of Mark, Steve Vallejo, Sherman, Dave Irving, and Ken Ito standing behind the Norton.  If you look closely you can see Cleo, the dog.  This was the first labor of love.
In Colorado Springs is a beautiful man name Dana Robbins.  He took the Matchless, which gave new meaning to "Basket Case" and restored it to museum quality.  I want you to just click on that link and see for yourself!  You can even hear it run and it is smooth as butter.  And check the garage.  Sherman was always fascinated with Dana's garage.  He used to tell me "It is neat as a pin.  It is so nice you could take a date there.!"  Dana has worked very hard putting this bike back into running order and there is no way that this was done with anything but love. 
Over the last year or so I have had occasion to spend time with many of Sherman's friends.  They have all treated me with the same love they had for Sherman and I am touched beyond words by all of them.  So as I settle in for a night alone I leave you with this video made and posted by the man who built the Matchless, Dana Robbins, a wonderful man who shared Sherman's love of the British Motorcycles.  A heart felt thank you to Dana for a true labor of love.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y57dnNtUk_Q&feature=youtu.be

Spring time in the Rockies.

It is about to get to be spring here in this neck of the woods.  I actually thought about digging around out there to see if I can find my crocus.  I love spring!  My little acre here in the foothills is soon going to be covered with goat heads.  Do not let them fool you with that notion that geese eat goat heads, because they do not.  I have read that if I take baby geese and pen them up and feed them nothing but goat heads they will eat them, but my geese are so old and tough you could not even eat the gravy off of them, and I know you can not teach an old dog new tricks and the same goes double for a goose!
I have gotten 4 goose eggs so far this month.  I sent the first two to Andrea in California.  Thought I had them packed pretty well.  First I put them in a box with 200 pounds of side wall strength.  Packed them in bubble wrap before putting them inside.  I did not mark them fragile as this is a red flag to the post office workers! Then I put that box inside another box.  One was completely broken and the other cracked.  I had told the lady at the counter that there were two raw goose eggs inside, which I think was my mistake.  I expect as soon as I left she took the package to the back and hollered "Heads up Johnny!  Got goose eggs here!" and lobbed the box across the warehouse to Johnny who then went out for the touchdown. 
So I found out those two were shot and this time I packed each egg in a separate box after double wrapping them in bubble wrap.  Then I padded the box with the large bubble wrap and fitted them all around with more bubble wrap.  I left it rounded on the top so nothing could be set on top of it and slapped my label on, wrote "fragile" in red marker every where there was a place to write it and kissed it goodbye and wished it well.
Now if this does not work I am going to try UPS and see how that goes.  Right now I am watching a seed catcher try to make it's way to a lady in Canada.  It left customs on February 20 and is "in transit".  I love this selling on ebay, but it seems like the more I pay for postage, the less I get in service.  I sent towels to Austrailia after I mailed the seed catcher and she has already received them and left feedback.  Amazing!
But back to the Spring time thing here in the Rockies.  I know that means nothing.  Two days ago we had a blizzard.  Today it will be almost 70 and I think we have another blizzard coming Saturday or Sunday.  And they all say, "We need the moisture!"  And I say, "Hey, rain is moisture and I do not have to shovel it!" 
It was so simple back in Kansas.  We planted our potatoes on St. Patrick's Day.  I think out here they plant on Good Friday.  It really is no never mind, because I always dig mine up way to early any way and only wind up with a little hand full.  I love to go back to Kansas the end of March cause it seems like the Lilacs are blooming and the trees are leafing out and Tulips and Daffodils every where.  I just love Spring.  When I go there and then come back here then I get to enjoy spring twice!
But I can not go again this year cause I have to gather the goose eggs or I will have babies and that is not good.  I keep saying that when Goosie dies, I will get rid of the flock, but then Goosie has a husband and son that will need taken care of.  (Just ended that sentence with a preposition which I hate to do, but seemed no way around it.)  Somebody suggested I just chop their heads off and call it good.  Bastard!
Off to a sewing class today.  I am going to learn to make a cup cake pot holder at Sprinkles.  Now I know how to do about anything that can be sewed, but it is rather a social thing.  It is only two hours and we will have fun.  And then I will come home and hopefully do something!
Have a good one.
 

Sammy comes for a visit and now he goes home!

My son flew in from Dallas a week or so ago and what a time we had.  Rather then rent a car or have me drive up to Denver, he opted for the little plane that shuttles passengers down here.  Methinks he may not make that choice again.  He is a seasoned traveler, unlike his stay at home mother, but this was his first flight on in a "crop duster.  His first clue that this might be different was when he stepped through the door and was told they would need to "balance the load".  He chose to set right behind the pilot so he would not have to look out the window.  He deemed the pilot to be a school boy out on Spring Break.  The co pilot seemed to be his baby sitter.  He was first instructed that in case of an emergency he would be in charge of unlatching the door and kicking it open!  And he took the orders very seriously!

The flight down was only 39 minutes from take off to landing, but he still had time to look around the cabin.  He spotted an instruction manual in the flap on the back of the co pilot's seat and wondered why they were required to carry them, being seasoned pilots and all.  At that moment the lady co pilot reached back and got the book, and my optimistic little son was sure she was reading the part entitled "How to Land the Plane."  But he did take precautions when they said they would be landing in Pueblo in just a few moments.  He braced one foot on the aisle seat and his arm against the fuselage.  OMG!  I would have given an arm and a leg to have been on that plane!  When he came down the stairs and into the lobby he was laughing that hysterical laughter that is a sign that one has been wound too tight and is now coming unwound.  Good to see.

And home to dear sisters we went.  Dona is my middle child.  She looked at Sam and the conversation that ensued is as follows:
"Oh, Sammy!  You have no hair!"
"Never had any.  Male pattern baldness!"
"You are getting pudgy!"
"Well, I have not been working out because I am busy at work."
"Still with so and so?"
"Yes."
"Wow you are lucky to still have the same one after all this time.  You are lucky to have anyone!"
At this point Sam turned to me and said, "Boy she really missed her calling!  She should have been a motivational speaker, because she is sure motivating me towards suicide!"

We did have a lovely 5 days which passed much to quickly.  And then it was back to the airport to send the little guy home.

Sammy at the check in counter.

In the "holding area"

 

Taxiing down the runway!

Up, up and

away!

Sam makes the flying thing look so easy.  I wanted to take a train trip this summer.  I could leave here and stop in Garden City and spend a day with the girls, then to Hutchinson and spend a few days with the sisters, and then Kansas City and visit Shirley, on to St. Louis to see Jeffery and Fred, and then finally to Dallas.  See, the train does not go North and South, just East and West.  And the train ride is roughly 24 hours with all the layovers and such.  Plane goes straight.  Much quicker.  I labor under the notion that if the good Lord wanted me to fly he would have made me a bird!

But I have only been on an airplane once in my life and that was because Kenny and Clifford tricked me and I almost showed them how to have massive coronary over a mountain pass!  But that is another story all together.

So, the son is back in Dallas, the girl's are back in Kansas and I am once more home alone.  Life goes on and time passes.  Right now, I am off to take care of the geese, then downstairs to sew and then up one level to list on eBay.  I leave you with this video from youtube.  Rather made my day.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=z1mhPVs0llI

 

Copied directly from MSN News in case you missed it on the PFLAG Blog.

Following her son's beating death 15 years ago, Judy Shepard has become a forceful voice for gay rights and a sort of mother figure for gay teens turned away by their own families.

NEW YORK — The mother who championed gay rights after her son was tied to a fence and beaten to death couldn't bear to sit through the play that has helped keep his memory alive for the nearly 15 years since his murder.
But this weekend, at the opening of a double-billing of Moises Kaufman's "The Laramie Project" and "The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Judy Shepard — seated in an aisle seat to allow for an easy escape — soldiered through the entire five-hour production, which recalls the story of Matthew Shepard's death in 1998.
"I just really didn't feel I needed to watch it because I lived it. And so many of the scenes bring back such horrific memories. I've never felt comfortable crying in public," Shepard said just before the Saturday performance. "It's been 15 years. I should be able to do this now."
Shepard made it through with the help of hugs from well-wishers at the intermissions.
Kaufman, a playwright and director who leads the Tectonic Theater Project, recalled the Shepard murder as a watershed moment that helped create a generation of activists and energize "straight allies" to the cause of gay rights.
"All of a sudden we had an image, we had an event, that operated as a catalyst," said Kaufman, a Venezuelan native who lives in New York.
The original play was born from the question of why Shepard's murder resonated more than other hate crimes, Kaufman said. The play has been staged more than 1,000 times.
Ten years after Shepard's death, Kaufman and Tectonic returned to Laramie, Wyo., to produce an epilogue and to interview Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney, who are serving life sentences for the murder.
Nine U.S. states have legalized same-sex marriage, and in March the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage under federal law as being between a man and a woman, and whether Proposition 8, a California ballot initiative that outlawed same-sex marriage, should be struck down.
ANATOMY OF A MURDER
Henderson and McKinney confessed to meeting the 21-year-old at a Laramie bar on the night of Oct. 6-7, pretending to be gay and offering him a ride home, with the intent to rob him. They grew enraged after Shepard made a sexual advance, they said, and took him to a desolate area in the outskirts of town, tied him to a fence and repeatedly struck him in the head with a handgun.
Shepard was close to death when he was discovered 18 hours later and he died in a Colorado hospital on Oct. 12. In her 2010 book, "The Meaning of Matthew," Judy Shepard wrote that while she was at her son's side, she was barely aware of the rallies by thousands of well-wishers in cities across the country.
Judy Shepard, who is soft-spoken and shy despite her years in the limelight, says she is a reluctant advocate. But she has become a forceful voice for gay rights and a sort of mother figure for gay teens turned away by their own families.
"Many of us feel that Judy is the mother we never had. But it goes way beyond that," Kaufman said. "It's a story of a person who was put in an untenable situation and got the skills to triumph in that situation."
Shepard, who still lives in Wyoming, heads the Matthew Shepard Foundation and has fought for gay rights in her home state and for a federal hate crimes bill, which President Barack Obama signed into law in 2009 with Shepard at his side.
"I did what people didn't expect me to do, which was not go away," she said. "As a straight person, I have a gravitas that someone in the gay community saying the things that I say would not have."
She said she has been frustrated that change in Wyoming, also the setting of the 2005 film "Brokeback Mountain," has come slowly. The state has no hate crimes law and this year the legislature rejected a gay marriage bill and a domestic partnership bill for same-sex couples.
Before the performance, a man who said he was about the same age as Matthew Shepard would be now tearfully thanked Shepard for her advocacy and said gay people "could not have had a better angel and a better mother."
Shepard's eyes also filled with tears, but she quickly regained her composure, saying: "This is what happens when you piss off somebody's mom."
 ——

No call lists and unsubscribe emails.

Seems like every couple weeks my e-mail box begins to fill up overly quickly.  This is because AOL does not kick everything that is spam over to the spam box which I can delete.  And when I delete the spam I am really not solving anything, because they just send more.  So I read each one until I reach the unsubscribe link and go that way.  So today I cut the ties on super cheap Viagra, declined funding Diane De Gette's run for congress, lost the contact with match.com, lost my chance at a time share and unsubscribed from Adstars 5 times.  I feel good about all this though I do resent having to unsubscribe from something I never subscribed to in the first place.
I have had lord only knows how many phone calls from companies wanting to sell me supplemental insurance and this confuses me.  I was under the impression there is only a small window of time that I can change insurances with, but they do not seem to have any time limit on when they can call and ding away at me.  Seems like the "Do Not Call" list is just a list and nothing really happens because it does not really stop anyone from calling.
Oh, and a survey!  Click.
And I am still fielding phone calls for a grandson that lived here  13 years ago and someone else who never lived here, but used my phone number for what ever reason.  And try to tell these people that I have lost contact numbers for them.
Oh, and today was Valentine Day so in honor of the big occasion, I dug out my wedding rings, just so I can remember that once upon a time, Valentine's Day actually mattered.  And better days are ahead.  Sam will be here on Saturday and so will two of the girls.  And I have a quilt in the quilter, the towels are off the loom and life in general is still good.  Or as good as it gets around here.