Naming

Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. If it exists we want to name it, put a label on it, and tuck it neatly into a little box somewhere.  That clarifies things -- to a point.

We have special ceremonies for naming and books that tell us the meaning of names in different languages. Our specific name for God tells others who we worship.

There is incredible power in a name.  Some people in the past kept their real name a secret because they didn't want to give that power to just anyone.  Our good name is important to us.  Families die to protect their names.

But what about those informal names, those nicknames, those cute, or not so cute, things we burden children, (and others) with out of love, or meanness.  Sometimes they are unintentional, but their power is not lessened by that.

Mommy's little old maid, Daddy's bulldozer, hyper, sissy, dumb bell, stubborn . . . each and every name we put on a human being affects them. 

I think it is important to separate actions from names and maybe even more important not to dissect people who are still alive.  Nurturing, bringing all the parts into a harmony and fullness that is uniquely one is actually much more important than naming.

Perhaps we should have nurturing ceremonies where we say what we will bring into a child's life instead of simply naming them.

Mad Hatters

The sum of all my parts is me.  Like an unsolvable algebra problem I know the total, but where did x come from?  How did I learn y?  Why do I think w, or feel z?

Are there things so amazing they cannot possibly be remembered, so dark they must not be remembered?  Do heaven and hell converge somewhere deep in the unconscious creating squeaky little facades that don't even hint at what is behind those covers always on the verge of slipping?

One plus one only add up to two when they are written down in cold cramped little symbols devoid of passion and feeling.  Set them free in the world and suddenly they become so much more. One hand plus one hand equals ten fingers and then the possibilities become infinite.  Those ten fingers touch and type, shield and suppress, grasp and give in ways that alter perception.

Explosions and implosions make all things extrapolations.

Sitting in the eagle's nest above creation creates Mad Hatters whose eyes are burned by clarity and so I huddle far below shielding myself with order, with routines and schedules and only tiny little flights of fancy into the real world whose scope and intensity are far too great for me.

I know that if one of my fingers forgets that tea then the Mad Hatter becomes a mad hater.  The world is always on the edge of extinction.

Judas goats

Ignorance is one of the most dangerous things in the world, because when people don't understand something they fear it.

Unfortunately fear is often a learned response eliciting a fight or flight reaction that either doesn't solve the situation or makes it worse than it was.

People, who absolutely know better, take advantage of these things to further their own causes.  Instead of trying to educate people they encourage or incite them to react in violent or irrational ways, because it keeps them from looking at the real problems.

It is not enough to learn everything at your mother's knee.  Knowledge increases every day and mother may not be privy to the newest information.  Remember that once upon a time an atom was the smallest known particle and women were considered chattel.  We know better now.

We know lots of things now that we didn't know.  Don't allow yourself to be hand fed information by anyone.  Get out there and do some detective work!  Get several different sources, even go directly to the source,  so you aren't led like lambs to the slaughter. 

You absolutely cannot know too much.

every little bit helps

 I went to college in 1967 and we were going to change the world! 

There was an underlying anger in our need for change.  We felt like the older generation had sold us out, sending us off to fight battles we didn't understand or believe in, turning what should have been basic human rights into political ploys, using money as blinders to block out the misery in the world.

We did the best we knew how to change things, going overboard in some places and eventually capitulating and going over to join our fathers and mothers in their three piece suits and work a day world.

We failed, but not completely. 

Our children are the one thing that keeps hope alive. 

They also felt  that we had sold them out, that our misuse of power and money set them up for a life time of struggling.  They wanted to change the world and now some of them are giving up, capitulating like we did to the status quo -- except, like us they really haven't.

They will take the crumbs that we left and add them to the crumbs they managed to eke out as they turn to the task of bringing up their children.  One day they will realize they didn't sell out any more than we did and one day their children, my grandchildren, will go forth into the world with a need to change things for the better.

Evolution is a long process.  It takes a long time to change the bones, the infrastructure.  Over 313 million people in our country, over 7 billion in the world, and each one has a mind filled with their own ideas and needs so that any attempt to bring us all into some kind of harmony is colossal . . .

But not impossible.

Our babies take the steps that keep hope afloat.

Yodas of the world unite!

I am old by the standards of my youth, but other than not being quite as strong as I once was, most of the changes I have made are merely cosmetic.  I am not now, nor was I ever a flibbertigibbet.  I can be cute, or forgetful occasionally.  Everyone can, but as my hair turned gray it did not suck the sense out of my brain.

Women who buy into it the little old lady cartoons or the sitcom grammas and morph themselves into these crazy parodies of people make it hard on all of us. I think they feel it is what they are supposed to do, or that they have a better chance of getting attention if they are "cute" or "forgetful" or "ditzy" when what they are really doing is handing over their autonomy.

As nice as it might seem to have someone "take care" of everything for me, especially the disagreeable, or difficult, or complicated things, it leaves me vulnerable to whatever else they may feel, in their opinion, I need.

Beware!  That is a two edged sword.  Remember what it was like being a child, having other people make all the decisions, being at the mercy of people who mean well, but don't understand.

We really have come a long way and it would be a shame to give it all back simply because it is easier.  In today's world it is dangerous not to keep up with technology and the new ideas on health, wealth and welfare.  The world is changing, not always for the better, but changing none the less and the older generation should not give up their role as the Yodas, or wise men and women they are before their time.

That requires being an active, intelligent, believable source.

Balance

It's a new day.  Always a new day.

That is the mantra of the eternal optimist or the absolutely desperate. 

I am both.

I am also one of the extraordinarily lucky which may account for the first.

Titles, though, are simply labels.  They don't get me through the tough times, which are just as tough for one person as another even if they react to them differently.  It is really impossible to know what someone else is thinking, or feeling.  Some people are better at hiding their feelings and others need to let them all hang out.

I've always been afraid if I let them all hang out (yes, as much as I reveal on this blog, there is much more) that I will completely lose it.  I need that tight English rein I received from my father to balance out that wild Irish rush I got from my mother. 

I suspect life is always a balancing act.  Or like the song says, "a little bit of this, a little bit of that."  Variety is the spice of life.  It is also the staff.  No matter how good or bad things are, I know something will change.  Usually sooner rather than later.

My job, if I choose to accept it, is to roll with the waves, knowing I can't steamroll water but I can at least float.  And floating keeps me around for the next set of waves.

Taproot

I love discovering the essence: the place where something begins, the place where it can begin again, the very base.

It is like unwinding one of those mysterious balls that have little treasures tucked up into them.  I never know what I will find.

Some things, like dandelions, have a taproot, one place that is the source of life.  Although it grows from a seed, as long as there is a taproot, that dandelion will exist.

Other things, like words, have an etymology.  A way of going back and back and back to see where a word began, or what its origins are.

Of course almost nothing grows truly linearly.  This world is enormous and there are probably as many exceptions as there are rules. Even the dandelion is affected by how much rain falls and the temperatures around it.

So when I start looking at religion it is like discovering the never ending story again and again.  No matter where I start, the journey backwards goes into unlikely and unexpected places.  Finding the taproot is almost impossible, but the quest for it is one of the most fascinating.

If I follow the human line it only goes back as far as there were people.  If I follow the god line, who knows where it goes?

A pretty good start

Work is a necessary part of life.  Without it most of us would have no home, or any of the finer things in life -- like food and clothing.   But how we work is as diverse as we are.

There is the drudgery of a job that is repetitive and long and there is the contentment of having a job that is repetitive and long.

There is the satisfaction of knowing a job saves lives and there is the terror of knowing a job is a life saver when the gods smile upon you.

There is the job that provides all of life's necessities and the job that is one of life's necessities.  That is the one I am thinking of this morning: the job where the only pay comes in abstract ways that are possibly more important than I might want to believe. 

Most of my jobs are this sort now  I don't even have to mow the lawn anymore.  I don't really have to do much of anything, so my personal sense of worth is sometimes terribly challenged.  I need to be useful more than I need money.

Being one of the lucky few whose job was always one that seemed important in the grand scheme and also being one of those whose job was one I loved more than I loved any money it made has sort of prepared me for this time in my life.

I am a volunteer.  I volunteer between twelve and twenty hours a week and even though it is real work, it is one of my favorite things to do.  The rest of my time is spent doing what I want.  Well, actually, all my time is pretty much spent doing what I want.  Does life get any better than that?

It might, but this is a pretty good start.

Bigger is not always better

Growing up I always wanted to be bigger, taller, stronger.  I always wanted the biggest room, the biggest doll, the biggest cookie.  And then a subtle change began to take place.

I got my Barbie doll with her perfect miniature clothes, tiny necklaces, teeny gloves, small suitcases.  I received my first transistor radio and I was on my way to the other end of the spectrum.  Partly because I was becoming aware of boys and in that age girls were supposed to be tiny child like creatures for the rest of their lives, I began to bemoan big.

I have long since outgrown the need to be petite, but I find myself drawn to smaller and simpler things as the years go by.  Some of my furniture is large, but a few good pieces surrounded by a few smaller but exquisite pieces is now more satisfying than a room crammed floor to ceiling.

And that has set the tone for everything else.  I find myself uncomfortable with huge amounts of anything.  Instead of making me feel rich, too much makes me feel burdened down.

It is a life style in progress because the one thing I never have to worry about is too much money.  The universe has taken care of that to the extreme, so if I pare things down too much I sometimes find myself actually in need.

And . . . I still lean towards the greedy side when it comes to food.  I love to eat, so although I am no longer drawn to those elephant cups of soda for pennies at gas stations, I could easily consume a table's worth of crème Brule.

But I am working on it because I really do know that bigger is not always better and my life depends on it.

The people

We elect a president to make decisions in the best interest of the country and I can understand that it is perhaps better if he remains a bit aloof from some things in order to make nonpartisan decisions (if that is possible.)  Everyone else should have to have personal interaction for a reasonable amount of time with those whose lives they are making decisions for.

It is much more difficult to make across the board decisions when you are personally involved with those who have to live with them.  School boards should each, separately, spend a week in the most overburdened elementary and high school of their district.  In the classroom!

Congressmen should spend a few days with a family in their poorest district, seeing how they really live, what it is like to choose between food, the doctor, and caring for a sick family member.

I am sure it would change the people who ran for these offices if they knew right up front they were going to have to get down and dirty, have to make real decisions based on real experiences, not just make backroom deals and push papers around.

The reality of any situation is much different once you are on the floor rubbing shoulders, sharing lunch, talking face to face.

We are supposed to be a government by the people for the people.

The greatest gift

I walked around the corner of my sister's house and there she sat, on her patio, reading a book.  You cannot imagine how happy that made me. 

I think if children only learned one thing in school it should be how to read.  Reading is both the key and the door to nearly everything else in life. 

It's possible to get through life without reading, but it is like reinventing the wheel over and over again.  Otherwise I can look up what other people have already done and follow their lead.

Want to make something different for dinner, understand spatial perspective, learn how to play a musical instrument, figure out quantum theory?  It is all here for the asking -- if-- I can read.

Reading means being able to entertain myself with a minimal amount of money, being able to make myself laugh, or cry, or get lost in a world completely beyond where I am.  If I can read, the playing field is leveled in so many ways.  Without reading, the world can be so difficult and mysterious that I don't know how people make it.

A hundred and fifty years ago books were harder to come by.  Now I have access to the internet on my phone, where I can look up many things including the phone number of a library that will look up a book I want and even find it at one of the other local libraries if it that is necessary.  Then all I need to do is go get it.

After life and health, reading is probably the greatest gift I can give anyone, especially a child.

Peyton Place

I ran a check on me and found out that I am listed as living with my ex and his wife.  It doesn't say that, it simply lists their address as mine.  I have never even seen the house, let alone lived in it, but there it was!

That piece of misinformation is fodder for all kinds of stories.  I could write a murder mystery, or a "look at how messed up the internet is" rant.  I could even write a love story.  The possibilities are endless.

In the past we relied on the village gossips to keep life interesting-- if not factual.  Over the fence communication made sure everyone knew which side of the calendar people were born on, who was hopping burrow to burrow, and the "real" reasons people were doing what they did.

Now that small towns are getting larger this is not as effective, but the Internet has jumped in and filled the gap. 

Thanks to popular names, outright poor guessing and an eagerness to know all the dirty details, it is possible to hang over a million backyard fences all at once.

Peyton place has gone viral!

Should

My life always looks better in hindsight.  Not that it was better than now, but that it was better than I thought at the time.

Realizing this is a gift because it means I need to give myself a little more leeway right now.  I tend to downplay everything I do.  Part of it is truly that I was taught to be humble and not tempt the fates, but part of it is simply low self esteem.

Most of the people I know who have low self esteem try desperately to deny it.  We all run around over doing things, trying to make up for not being what we think we should be.

Should is a terrible task master.  She seldom says go to bed, rest, you are tired, or sick.  Instead she says, "Everyone would like to stay in bed. You aren't really sick, you should get up and get moving." Or she will whisper in my ear, "Don't stop, only lazy or fat people, stop.  You should keep going even if you can't breathe."

Should is a fourth generation family pet.  She may even be older than that.  Like a vampire she seems to be eternal, sucking the life out of people in order to survive.  And -- like a vampire -- she is especially pernicious, because she appears to have a solid foundation.

I need to find a way to step away from now and look back on it while it is going on, holding up a magic mirror so I can see that Should doesn't really exist. 

I am ousting the family pet.  She's not going to be in the picture anymore if I can help it.

I work for cupcakes

I woke up this morning and discovered Fall came last night!  It was cold enough I turned the furnace on before I showered and outside the trees were dropping leaves like flower girls at an immense wedding.  This was my kind of day!

I felt much better than yesterday.  Maybe because I'd had about twenty hours of sleep, or maybe because the weather was crisp and clean and healthy feeling, but most probably just because whatever was in my system had worked its way out.  Still, I took it pretty easy this morning, talking to bestest on the phone and watching Candace on HGTV.

Around noon I headed over to the school where I volunteer and even that started better than usual.  I finally have a name tag and do not have to paste a visitor tag onto my shirt twenty times a day any more.

I am starting to get a feel of what is expected of me in kindergarten and my teacher is beginning to understand what she can ask me to do.  Life is so much simpler this way.  I wander around asking young authors to read me their stories, help some "turtle talk" the new words they are writing, lead the letter bingo game and scramble to clean up between projects.  Then today I stayed a little later.

I got to be Sam, a library mouse in today's book.  The children asked him to make them books like he did in the book we read and they left him eight goldfish as a thank you.  I sneaked down to the workroom and made 28 books that said, "words and pictures by (each child's name)."  On the back "Sam" signed each one with his name inside a heart.  This is my favorite sort of work to do.

Tomorrow a roomful of kindergartners will be surprised that Sam did come and left them each a book to write and illustrate.  Tomorrow we will have a room full of young authors!

Oh, and I got a cupcake too since Nicole had a birthday!

Psychic psyche

I wonder if I'm sick today or if my psyche wants to play.

Is she sending out false tremors, roiling sounds and tummy quivers?

Are these aches just phantom pains, ghostly things that boo and train

My lesser self to stay at home, throw myself an indulgent bone?

Should I buck up, get out of bed, dress myself, and shake my head

Go out outside where germs abound or stay at home and play around?

I never know quite what to cure, when feeling ill I'm never sure.

What things are real, my mind's a blur and so I need you to concur.

Is someone hitting my head with a stick, am I hurting, am I sick?

Does my tummy feel like a brick, do you know?  Please tell me quick!

Siblings

Siblings have a unique relationship.  We knew each other when . . . truly when.  As the oldest I knew mine when they were in diapers.  I remember how my brother scooted around the house, wearing the bottom out of all his little onesies, how my sister liked to climb up on the window sills and stand there looking out the window, how my youngest brother learned to walk in casts that came up to both hips and finally he even learned to sort of run in them.

I remember my sister writing notes to her first boyfriend when he asked her, "Will you merry me?"  I can still see my brother, who is over six feet now, carrying his bass fiddle to school when it completely dwarfed him, or my little brother playing with Hey Boy, our neighbor's beagle.

I felt so protective of these people, even as they drove me to do things I would never want to write about!  Four of us five years apart, growing up in the fifties and sixties, moving so often that family members were often our only friends for a summer spent exploring new territory, riding our bicycles out to the gravel pit, or turning old chicken houses and garages into club houses.

We played and fought, stood up for each other and tattled too.  We were just regular kids and now we are just regular adults, all grown up and as different from each other as pumpkins and green beans.  You'll still occasionally find us all at the table together and today two of us are taking a road trip.

Making a good wish

"Mirror mirror on the wall show me how I look to all"

Or most . . .

Or maybe just the people who love me. . . .

Wishes are complicated, so maybe it's a good thing many of them never come true.

Making a good wish requires careful thinking.  (I learned that from cartoons and fairy tales!)

There are the social obligations to wish for:  world peace, people getting well, no global hunger.

There are the personal ones:  make me skinny, or eternally young, or forever healthy.

But I usually opt for, I hope I am always as happy and contented as I am now, or more so, which seems like a more reasonable wish.  It relies on the fact that I know I am someone who cares about other people.  That if things improve in this world I will feel better, but I don't feel qualified to choose which things, or to decide how they occur.

Friday the thirteenth comes round and round

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, London bridge is falling down, Jack and Jill fell down a hill, Mother Goose certainly had a dark side!

Everyone and everything falls down again and again and so can the children singing the songs.  No one is ever really gone, or irreparably hurt in a nursery rhyme.

That's not always true in the real world, but the great majority of problems in life are mostly temporary inconveniences.  The dog thinks going upstairs is as good as going out.   My child's first broken bone comes right on the heels of my first big bonus check.  I dare to talk about the prickliness of life at a convention of hedgehogs.

Life's lessons can be overwhelming when they come too close together, but they really are only lessons.  If I learn something from them, even if it is only that life goes on, then I come out on top.

Superstitions are born when people need an outside source to blame for the bad things that happen in life, but regardless of whose fault bad things are as long as there is breath to sing and energy to get back up -- there is hope and hope has done amazing things.

In the light of a new millennium,  lets start to look at Friday the 13th. with the hope and joy of a child, as a day to spring back up and begin again.

To sleep perchance to dream

I crawled out of a dream into this gray drizzly day exhausted. 

This is one of those times when I work so hard in a dream I need to rest when I get out.  I can't really explain that except to say that it is true.  I am a very vivid dreamer.

I am not a lucid dreamer.  I don't usually know it's a dream, nor do I have a conscious way of controlling what is happening. 

Instead my subconscious goes to town creating situations that usually include me, but where I am only an observer at other times.

One time I dreamed that George Clooney's friends played a joke on him while he was sleeping and he woke up suspended from a rescue helicopter stretcher high above the ground.  He was angry and sat up yelling at them to get him down, but when they tried they couldn't do it, so they got an elephant to pull him in and she fell off the cliff too.  I remember watching that elephant falling through the air and catching herself on an old wooden bridge, then pulling herself up onto it. Where these dreams come from I have no idea.

In last night's dream we were trying to get the house ready for my grandma's funeral.  It was not her house, it was her older sister's chicken barn so it needed lots of work.  Hundreds of relatives, most of whom I didn't know,  came in for the funeral and were helping.  Unfortunately the ones who camped in the meadow out back got washed away by a flood because they didn't believe me when I told them that was not a good place.  I lived right up the road so I was in charge of all these hill people. 

I got a glimpse of my reflection and was surprised by how young and beautiful I was, dressed in a simple robin's egg blue dress and filmy scarf over my deep brown curly hair.  I flitted from one place to another as people canned and cooked, painted and sawed.  The babies were extraordinary, talking at six months, and crawling at warp speed; the people very plain and working hard.

I finally began running from one end of the house to the other trying to use either the outhouse, or the indoor bathroom but always being thwarted by something going on in them until I woke up.  By that time all I wanted to do was sit down and rest. 

It felt like that dream lasted days.  If I hadn't really had to go to the bathroom I might still be there.

I have never met anyone who dreams like I do and I belonged to a dream group for over ten years.

More than enough

The mark of a great relationship is the feeling that both people come out on top.

I think it is satisfying to help people out and do for them and it is nice when people do the things I need done too, but a great relationship must go beyond that.

I think of my dulcimer and those four strings.  They are all tuned to work together.  It's hard to get a bad sound from a dulcimer, but there are times when the sound can be just extraordinary.  That is the sort of relationship I am talking about.

Two whole people, separate in every way, pour themselves into each other without ever becoming empty and both come out fuller in the end.  It almost feels like magic.  It is more than enough, but I have to believe it is the most natural thing of all.

I am so used to thinking of the world the way it was presented to me growing up.  It never occurred to me that there are better, richer ways of being -- but there are.

There is a hidden power behind absolute equal selflessness that makes it feel very selfish.

A play house

My ideal house would have huge windows surrounded by walls that concealed cupboards, closets and hideaways of all sorts. 

In fact, some of those walls would be portable if I had my way.  Large storage areas on big heavy wheels so that I could have an enormous living room one day and an enormous bedroom the next.  Only the plumbing and electrical outlets would be finite.  There would be hidden electrical hookups that those movable walls could connect with so I would have the illusion of wall outlets

The necessary kitchen pieces would be hidden behind sliding doors, but flush against one wall.  Counters, islands, tables, anything else would be portable.  Bathrooms would be tucked into two diagonal corners and of course the walls would have to be very thick to accommodate the storage, which would also make them part of the insulation.  Large pieces of furniture, like beds or sofas would have lockable coasters on them.

From the outside it would appear to be a normal, square house with a garage, but that garage would have a ramp into the house to make moving anything in and out simple. 

The inside would always be in a state of creative flux.  It might be plush and Moroccan one day and minimalist the next, but it could never exceed the storage in the walls, so there would always be a comfy cozy simplicity to it.

It would be a playhouse for real living.

A sensual vacation

How many senses do I have?  I hear, see, smell, taste, touch and those are just the ones that are easy to measure.  What about those things I only feel in my head and heart? 

Hearing my favorite music, or seeing a beautiful sight is nice, but it is the visceral aftermath that really rounds out the experience. 

Truly satisfying experiences incorporate every part of my being from the outside in.  My hand runs across something round and smooth and my heart contracts, my mind swells.  Synapses fire in my brain pulling up memories, pictures from the past, echoes of every similar experience that this one might build on and what was a tiny moment in time becomes whole, immense, satisfying in ways I can barely explain.

Living in the moment can be such a sensual vacation that it leaves me limp with joy. 

Every bite of food from the crisp pristine delight of pineapple snow to the warm gooey sweetness of a half baked cookie floating in bits of chocolate and cold vanilla ice cream, touch my tongue and burrow into my unconscious.

Every step vibrates with the fact that it is taking me some place I want to go, a place in the world, a place in the heart, a place among the healthy, the intriguing, the beautiful, or even the frightening.  Nothing is humdrum and simple when I am immersed in this sort of living.

And yet, it is simply amazing to think life can be so rich.

All eyes on the prompter

In a world where acting out is mistaken for standing out, children are taught to dance and sing, play ball and compete as aggressively as they can.  The greasy wheel gets the oil, the loudest mouth gets the television contract.

Flashiness is mistaken for taste, expensive for quality.  Power is important for what it gets, not what can be done with it.

The nouveau riche stand firm and are proud of it!

But where is the noblesse oblige?

Where is the gentleman who makes everyone feel good even as he is teaching and correcting?  Where is the gentlewoman who puts everyone at ease? 

Where is the honor that holds fast even when no one knows it exists?

The world has become such a large stage that people have forgotten the real work goes on behind the curtain. 

The applause isn't real if it is only the correct response.

The long and winding road

Like most children I grew up watching what people did instead of listening to what they said.  The road might have been shorter and easier if I had done otherwise, but it simply wasn't in my nature.

I heard the things I wanted to hear, "follow your dreams, do what you love and the rest will follow, be yourself . . ." and edited out all the rest.  My maps had lots of uncharted territories on them and as much as that terrified me, it must have intrigued me too, because I never chose to change my ways.

There were a few constants.  As a child whose first three years were without television, I was never without the story in my head.  

When I discovered writing, life got even better.  I love the look of a blank sheet of paper, or blank screen.  I like the feel of ink flowing from my pen onto a paper and when I learned to type, everything about it drew me in from the sound of my fingers hitting the keys, to the way the words magically appear.  It is as if there is a direct line between my mind and my fingers.  It is a heady feeling, a god-like feeling to create stories from scratch.

Even if no one reads them.

Today as I sit in this chair, typing out my humble thoughts on an English professor's computer I realize that I came here the same way I have done everything else --  through the side door, but it has been the most incredible and satisfying journey you can imagine and I wouldn't trade one day of it for anything else.

My life was evidently never meant to be on the straight and narrow.  It meanders along, struggling up mountains when there are trams that could make it easier, fording streams when there are ferries galore, sniffing out the odd thoughts and and experiences that are richer and more satisfying for me because I stumbled on them myself in my own time

For better, or worse, that is who I am.  I am a watcher who has learned to listen and I need an extraordinary amount of time to savor it all so I can write it down.  Only in the writing does it become real for me.

America

I am always amazed at the stereotyped ways I think about places.  As a six year old I saw the Wizard of Oz and automatically decided that everyone in Kansas lived in a black and white world.  Then my cousins, from Kansas City, came to visit and they were not that dull sort of pasty white I saw on the television.  They looked just like me!

You would think that would have been lesson enough, but not really . . .

I went to Wyoming expecting to see "where the deer and the antelope roam free" and they were in one small isolated strip of mountain roads where the grades were six percent or worse.

I imagined Louisiana as a place where, "my momma done rocked me in my cradle in them old cotton fields back home" only to discover green lawns dripping with live oaks and crepe myrtles among pontoon boats and subdivisions.

I came to Alabama without "my banjo on my knee" and found, not bayous and backwoods houses surrounded by alligators and Spanish moss, but mountain roads and majestic trees. 

I've seen sand dunes in Michigan and Colorado, the old rolling mountains of North Carolina and the rugged Rockies out west. And the one constant is always the breath taking beauty I find when I arrive in a new place for the first time.

From the Mariposa Grove of giant Sequoias to the Everglades of Alligator Alley this country truly is beautiful from, "sea to shining sea."

On the road

I have a million thoughts while driving down the road, but let me stop, get lunch and hook up to the Internet and my mind seems to go blank.  The one thing I know is that I love traveling.

If I had the money I would travel much more than I do and I would stop much more too.

I would love to be able to visit all these odd little places I pass even if I had to do it alone, which I probably would.  Most of the people I know who can travel don't seem to really want to just jump in the car and go, or stop when they feel like it.

It seems most people just go to get places.

I do that too, sometimes, but sometimes I would just like to stop and see that petrified forest, or Bessie's plantation, or even Uncle Ron's flea market.

In the end, for me, it all boils down to money.  I don't have the money to stop if it means extra nights in a hotel or extra meals on the road, so I sandwich what I can into that area between places like everyone else.

Blood, sweat, and tears

I can understand an eagle, or a hawk circling high over their prey, hunger sharpening their skill as they plunge downward and make the kill before ever having to look into the eyes of their victim. That is nature in its purest form.

What I don't understand are politician's whose hunger for fame and money allows them to circle down low over their prey, pinning them to the poverty board to die a long agonizing death of hopelessness even after jumping through all the right hoops and doing their best to be a useful and decent human being.

In a nation where the wealthy don't even have to look at the rest of us, our elderly are actually going hungry, our young are being duped into paying for educations they will never be able to use, our diversity is being used against us as they try to push the masses into neat little ruts of obedient desperation.

The very bottom rung of the ladder is to keep em hungry.  Then turn public education into a mere mass of statistics and soon the people are no longer thinkers and doers, they are what the politicians and the rich already thought they were --  desperate people simply trying to survive.

We need to break the mold, become amassers of real information, real thinkers, people who can look at a situation critically and make their own decisions then act on them appropriately.  Our ancestors gave their blood, sweat and tears to make that possible.  Now is not the time to hand it over meekly because we want to pretend it isn't necessary.

Family values

I come from a long line of people who believe good intentions accompanied by poor choices will turn out well in the end.

In the name of momentary happiness we play Russian roulette with our lives and the lives of those we love even though history and the odds are against us -- because that is what we do.

Then we are amazed and dismayed when things turn out poorly -- or worse, but still, that is who we are.

We are nice people! The three second smile seems to be enough for us, but it leaves a deceptively deep layer of anger lying right below the surface. 

It has taken me years to step out of the family conga line, but sometimes, when I get too close, I can still feel the anger trailing behind.