Diary of a Native Floridian

Hello!

2008-10-10T19:45:00.000-07:00

I'm delighted to have been able to transfer my original blog from AOL to blogger.
Thank you, Google!

I just wanna add...

2008-10-08T16:36:00.001-07:00

something I'm quite proud of:

You can still follow my thoughts

2006-07-15T04:44:00.000-07:00

http://newday-jean.blogspot.com/

Death of a Blog

2006-02-11T04:40:00.000-08:00

When AOL put banner ads across the top of our blogs, it was an affront. It was as though someone stuck an ad in the center of the page of a book. We weren't asked or even warned. They just showed up one day.

The thing is that bloggers PAY for their subscription (even though blogging is a bonus, a free opportunity.) You cannot blog on AOL if you are not a subscriber.

The company was using the attention bloggers get to bring in revenue.

A bunch of bloggers (me included), some of them noted for their blogs (myself not included), left AOL for that reason. Thus, this blog is left to slowly die.

Just recently, they increased our subscription price.

They didn't offer any consideration to the bloggers. Some of those options might have been whether to have an ad on their blog or not and maybe some subscription price reduction for agreeing to carry an ad.

I don't buy t-shirts or other clothing that advertises itself or anything else unless it is something I support. Why should my personal thoughts be sublet to advertise cell phones and banks?

And if a bloggers thoughts are used in such a way, with or without their consent, shouldn't they get some consideration?

AOL advertises "Your Thoughts. Your Blog."

There ought to be a proviso. Something like: "Your thoughts, used for profit."

6890

Alas.

2006-01-16T04:11:00.000-08:00

It doesn't look like we'll be coming back to AOL to blog, I'm sorry to say.

AOL did post a disclaimer under the ads. I guess they thought that was big of them.

The funny thing is, if they had asked, we might have responded with what ads we would accept and they might have made even more profit from the diversity and good will from those who chose to advertise for charities and non-profit organizations.

Judi's blog alone gets some 2,000+ hits a month. Tsk tsk That makes her pretty darn popular as bloggers go. In fact, I'd almost call her famous... and AOL just let her and her friends split.

Don't you miss the old-fashioned way of doing business?

6841

Enough already

2005-11-27T08:09:00.000-08:00

I am getting mail from people trying to tell me how to get action from AOL.

You know, I like AOL. I just don't like the ads.

I can't imagine moving to any other server. The customer service has been OUTSTANDING; a model for other companies.

I left primarily in support of my friends. I understand the nature of advertising. Almost everything you see when you open AOL is advertising something, football, movies, recipes, ways of living, cars...

I'd like to come back here. That's the honest truth.

I also do not CARE if they delete my journal. Really. If you have ever read it, you know that I believe in the transient nature of things.

I'm leaving the trail of my life inside the people who have read and been affected by me. The physical evidence of all people eventually fades. Think of all of the people throughout history. Very few names have stayed on our tongues. Maybe this journal is as close as I ever get to 15 minutes of fame. Still if we passed in the street, you wouldn't know me... and I am SO okay with that. I am content to be unimportant to the masses.

I have appreciated AOL for the Freedom of Speech it has afforded me. They have never scolded or censored me. I got some strange TOS (Terms of Service) message once, but I still have no idea what it was about.

I have made a few suggestions about how to get noticed in our complaint. Hopefully, they weren't too mean. I don't think we should resort to viciousness. I've said it before. I'd like to be able to come back... with my friends.

I would stand with my friends in a legal complaint. I would sign my name to a petition... in fact, I'm pretty sure I did so already.

It behooves AOL to give us an ear. In these days of cold business machines, listening to your customers is still an effective way to promote yourself and your good will.

I guess I need to welcome suggestions but I really just want a peaceful resolution, no matter what the outcome.

2005-11-18T00:58:00.000-08:00

My blog is worth $4,516.32.
How much is your blog worth?

Check this out

2005-11-18T00:53:00.000-08:00

http://journals.aol.com/journalseditor/magicsmoke/

If we can choose not to receive these, then why not allow us to block ads on our journals?

2005-11-18T00:16:00.000-08:00

"America Online extends a variety of marketing offers for valuable merchandise that are specially selected for our members. We've created this area to let you know more about these marketing offers, and to provide you with the option of not receiving such offers, if this is your preference.

Our special relationships with other companies often allow us to offer these products to you at significant discounts.

Some examples of the types of products include:
â¢ The newest and fastest modems
â¢ Digital cameras
â¢ Scanners
â¢ Computer software
â¢ Electronics and more

If you would prefer, you can choose not to receive these marketing offers by telephone, e-mail, U.S. mail, or pop-up screens. To do so, just click on the appropriate button to the right, then follow the instructions provided. You may choose not to have your name and address included on the mailing lists we provide to other companies, as well as other AOL companies, by clicking on the button labeled "U.S. Mail from Other Organizations". Please note that from time to time AOL may still contact you to deliver important information about AOL features and services or your account."

AND

"Mail Preference Service

For many people, advertising mail is informative and provides value, convenience and fun. However, direct marketing companies recognize that some people do not like to receive advertising mail.

If you want to reduce the amount of national advertising mail you receive at home, send your name and address to the Direct Marketing Association's Mail Preference Service (MPS):

DMA Mail Preference Service
P.O. Box 643
Carmel, NY 10512

After a few months, the MPS will reduce the amount of advertising mail you receive. You will continue to receive mail from companies with which you do business.

Names remain part of the MPS for five years. After five years, you will need to register with the MPS again.

If you continue to receive unwanted mail after a few months, the Direct Marketing Association suggests that you write directly to the mailer to request that your name be removed from the mailer's list.

Telephone Preference Service

If you want to reduce the amount of national advertising calls you receive at home, send your name, address, area code and telephone number to the Direct Marketing Association's Telephone Preference Service (TPS):

DMA Telephone Preference Service
P.O. Box 1559
Carmel, NY 10512

After a few months, the TPS will reduce the amount of advertising calls you receive from national marketers such as credit card and magazine subscription companies. Some local organizations and charities may not participate.

Names remain part of the TPS for five years. After five years, you will need to register with the TPS again.

If you continue to receive unwanted phone calls after a few months, the Direct Marketing Association suggests that you request your name be removed from a company's list when they call."

These two items are from Marketing Preferences in "Privacy and Marketing Settings" within the "Settings" here on AOL.

I'm thinking... I'm thinking...

2005-11-17T10:43:00.000-08:00

Ooo, that hurts.

6540

I like this about AOL. Easy to stick a picture here.

It worked. Didn't work in Blogger. (sigh)

By the way

2005-11-17T04:26:00.000-08:00

Undisputed King of AOL Journalers John Scalzi has links and things regarding the ad banner controversy.

http://journals.aol.com/johnmscalzi/bytheway/

hey folks, take it easy on me, please

2005-11-16T12:45:00.000-08:00

My life has been turned sideways since Wilma. Don't hussle me out of AOL just yet. I neither have great amounts of leisure time nor of cash to go whippin' around setting myself up with something that doesn't work as well as AOL dial-up.

I concur with my friends and fellow journalers that the ads are unfair, but I'm just getting my life back. Please... give me a "moment."

The truth of the matter is in your suggestion that it only hurts when we cancel our subscriptions but it is also true that we are replaceable. In the overall scheme, it just doesn't matter what we do unless we really bring AOL to widespread public notice.

Has anyone called The Washington Post or The New York Times? The Week? The Daily Show?

Has anyone whose blog has made headlines called the reporter who wrote their story?

Huh?

You wanna be loud about your protests? Say it with publicity as well as the withdrawal of subscription funds.

I didn't want to leave AOL, but their failure to enable anyone who wants to leave a comment to do so has been my greatest disappointment, not the placement of ads which may actually serve to keep our costs down over time.

I am not advocating using what should be personal space to advertise for corporate monsters like Kodak and Bank of America, but you best believe I'd allow it if I could get extra money for food and shelter from it.

I believe we should be allowed to choose and should be given some financial consideration if we allow ads.

I have been helped much more than hindered by the online help at AOL and I am not in a rush to desert AOL completely.

I am however in complete sympathy with my friends who take great offense at the unsolicited advertising in their journals and that is why I moved my journal to Blogger. I've had another journal there for quite a while but preferred the camaradery and ease of AOL.

More later. Gotta get back to work....

Jean

6520

Solidarity

2005-11-15T21:18:00.000-08:00

http://getithereat.blogspot.com/

Alas.

2005-11-15T12:11:00.000-08:00

The Mad Secretary has left AOL journals in protest of the ad banners on our journals.

Find her at: http://saveasecretaryfrominsanity.blogspot.com/

Hang on

2005-11-15T08:16:00.000-08:00

I need to update my journal links for new friends... I'll get a round tuit.

I am moving home regardless of the awful water. I have two offers in my neck o' the woods. One for shower privileges, the other to stay... but I want my kitty with me. Her company at lunchtime and the ability to journal/compute at-will are what I have missed. I will not miss the 11-mile trek that takes half an hour behind slow people and service trucks and vans and folks just toodling down the two-lane highway who seem to have all day... or burning up 132-plus miles of gas-o-line each week.

Those of you who see me on-line will be seeing me more. Unless the water is unbearable. This girl 'sa camper

Never mind removing 'em, I want MONEY!

2005-11-15T07:49:00.000-08:00

As for these ad headers, if you're gonna put them on my journal then give me a kickback. I got bills to pay!

This space reserved.

2005-11-15T07:33:00.000-08:00

luscious
turquoise
exotic
digital camera
gold
avocado
lush
plantains
Key West
translucent
contemplative
lavender
squishy
bubbles
painter
hushed
silvery
Paris
gypsy
brushes
mossy green
goddess
vacuum
diaphanous
splashy
spiritual
moonlight
exuberant
London
wet
colorful
meditate
joyful
dusk
artistic
mirror ball
butterflies
perfume
delightful
crows
heart
icon
cerulean blue
sparkling
nautilus
wandering feet
rocks
fuchsia
trees
sunshine
dream traveler
roast beef
ocean
spirited
delightful
exorbitant
jewels
journal
hilarious
foreign currency
sunflowers
cicadas
chocolate
inflection
glittering
sexy new phone
yellow
spattered
witty
shells
confetti
pastel
travel
glorious
handmade
flowing
chortle
lady bug

It's all about: Judi, Judi, Judi!

full of people

2005-11-13T05:04:00.000-08:00

That's the gift of my 40th birthday. I haven't been truly alone all weekend.

I went to Cristy's Friday night, Saturday after work I picked up Joey and went to Dad's where my sister and brother-in-law were waiting.

We sat down to a lovely dinner and had a nice conversation.

I'm letting Joey get to know me better the hard way. She doesn't know about my journal... yet. Joey is a chatty surrogate for my Em, who I hope to see this weekend. It's nice to have a buddy, but I miss being wrapped in Em's embrace.

Heck... I miss being held, touched... I might not even be so picky who's doing it.

I took Joey home and I noticed my friend Carlos in the laundry room behind her apartment. Instead of going to see him, I ran around to Joey's and called her out to meet him, then ran back around with her.

I love Carlos. He is so sweet. He was a journalist in Columbia. Here he teaches Spanish to International Baccalaureate students and also works for a metropolitan newspaper.

He was relating his difficulties finding love, telling us about going to Miami and Orlando. Joey told him to stop. I don't know if he really listened.

Last year at the PrideFest in Palm Beach County, he told my friend Lisa and I that he wished he was a lesbian. Men aren't interested in settling down. And he is a cute little package but fellows in this area just aren't interested in him.

Poor Carlos. He should have been a woman. He's so sweet.

This morning I got a note from a sweet friend with a simple but wonderful birthday message. At my age, aside from clothes and useful gifts, just being reminded that I am loved is the greatest gift there is.

And I said Hi via IM to Judi Heartsong before she jetted off on her morning mission. You know, Judi... the way you build our suspense... it's just wicked!

"What is she up to now?"

Well, I didn't ask but you know she's aflutter.

I can't help thinking that it was just a few days from today this time last year that I got dumped. Though it doesn't hurt anymore and the only time I remember her is when I realize I'm not thinking about her, I can't help remembering the events of the day and the feelings I had.

I have been grateful to know she is smiling now. That really helped me relax. It was what I needed because her face was so long and tragic the last time I saw it. It broke my heart... and then she called and broke my heart. My legs became lead and I would have given anything to have a bench right there where I stood (in a public place) when she told me over the phone that she needed to end our relationship.

Now I'm glad. I'm naive. I am glad that she turned me loose. She cared about me, but she didn't love me. She had so much going on. I would have stood by her all the way. That's okay. It taught me some things and helped me realize some truths in my life.

I wish we were talking today. I would thank her for my freedom.

Okay, enough from my stream of consciousness this morning. I think I'm going back to sleep....

Connecting

2005-11-11T02:29:00.000-08:00

There is a married couple that comes to the library often. They are "high-functioning developmentally-disabled" people. For those who don't comprehend PC speak(politically correct jargon), they are "mildly retarded."

The woman always takes out movies about "retarded" people, autistic people, "differently-abled" children. She does this so much that her husband once came alone, begging us to take away her library privilege. She was driving him crazy with her movies. He was fighting tears as I told him that I was not able to cancel the card.

I know how she feels. Less so now than when I was young, but I felt so alone as a young gay in a rural environment, in a large school and among my peers and family. I needed something to show me that I was not alone. I needed to know what to do and words to put with my feelings.

If you are anything other than a generic "white bread" American, and it is my contention that everybody is a part of some other group, then you have a need to find belonging. Trekkies. Bowlers. Fishermen. Nudists. Wine drinkers. Whatever!

That woman is looking for a connection. She gets little bursts of the feelings that she craves when the characters in her movies are happy and triumphant. She seeks to understand herself through them. She looks for what helps them succeed.

I know this because I used to do little else but seek solace from my isolation. More than anything, I wanted to belong and be loved for my true self. I found books about lesbians in catalogs. I got the Ladyslipper Music catalog (but I couldn't afford music.) When we got cable, I would try to watch anything that came along that even hinted of the Sapphic.

Things have changed a lot. When I told my Dad that I was not coming home until late on Tuesday, he sat upright and turned to me excitedly. "You're going out?!" he was smiling. "You should have a life!"

In the days when I stayed home with Mom, we never spoke of my sexuality, preference, needs. Now... my girlfriends come over to meet the family and are welcomed. My father wants to see me dating and having love in my life.

When I first told him I was gay at 19, he said he'd be disappointed. Now he knows it wasn't a phase.

Isn't it funny how things turn out? Nothing like what I expected when I was young. I thought I'd marry and make babies and be fulfilled as this wonderful wife. Hmph.

Turns out that I am messy and don't cook (although I can and I have and no one has died from my cooking), I'm not heterosexual, have only felt slight pangs of regret for not breeding and I need a man like I need a sucking chest wound.

The woman sits at the card catalog computer and searches and searches for something, anything. She has two interests. Animals and "special" people. When she doesn't find something new, she puts a hold on something old and takes it out again.

The library is full of people looking to be part of something. I guess you could say the world is.

"Sweet dreams are made of this.

Who am I to disagree?

Travel the world and the seven seas.

Everybody's looking for something." -- Eurythmics

finding journal moments

2005-11-09T01:22:00.000-08:00

Thank you, mad secretary. Your encouragement means a great deal. I was thinking today, when I had time to think about something, about what the journal means to me.

I am anxious to get back to my own living space... not just because it is cleaner and less cluttered now but because it affords me the convenience of journaling whenever I bloody well want to and I don't have to steal the time at work to religiously read Judi's almost daily installment.

It's hard to be clear about what you mean to say when you are trying to type around 4 in the morning because that's when you are the least likely to interfere with everyone else's needs. I've lost at least two and probably more entries that I was working on because I fell back asleep.

At least when I fall asleep with the computer on at my house, it doesn't matter because it only affects me.

It's close to 11 now and Dad is on his computer and watching TV in the office, my step-mom is in the Florida room watching TV, my step-brother is in his room next door and the bass of his stereo is pounding, about as lightly as it can, through the wall.

Back at my house, a single fan is pushing air from east to west and the light timer has clicked off. It's quiet, unless a train is humming through town. And there are more stars visible overhead.

The night after Hurricane Wilma passed, the city sky was clear and bright from sun bounced off of stars. I was glad that the dogs stirred to be let outside in the early hours. I would have missed the sight.

I am anxious to go home. I want my cat to have the freedom of the whole house and the luxury of her sunny spot by one of the front windows.

The garbage men come today. I am waiting to see how much they take away.

I hope someone comes and puts in my water system soon. I've been here at Dad's quite a while. No one seems to mind... it's not like I'm here most of the time. And they seem to be enjoying having my cat playing upstairs during the day. She likes to visit my step-brother when he's on his computer and hops onto the sink when my Dad is in his bathroom.

Chances are good that my step-mom lets her onto the screened balcony as well.

But I need to go "home." Well, heck, I'm paying full rent....

6391/2

moving on or staying still

2005-11-08T02:29:00.000-08:00

So I schlepped to the interview. I wasn't nervous... until I sat down before the interviewers.

When questioned I answered off the top of my head. I spoke fast. I sometimes stopped myself I was talking so much and asked them... "What was the question?"

Gawd, I dunno. I want this job. If I don't get it, I will be no worse off but I won't be any better off and I will dispair. I will have a renewed interest in trying to find a life again.

My life is good but it can be better. I need benefits and I sure as hell am not going to get them staying in one place. I also have a hope of continuing my education but I have put it on hold for so long that it seems like a distant and fading dream.

All I can do know is pray and quite literally, I have been praying.

My hope is that I am the last person they interviewed. The last on stage is always thought to be the best.

I don't know if I sold myself enough. The final question was why are you the best person for the job. Oi. I gave them my virtues but I should have said more. I'm older and more experienced than younger people who are applying. I'm sharper and more energetic than older people who are applying.

I certainly believe that I have what they need but what if I'm not what they envision. What if I didn't smile enough or look them in the eyes often enough.

I imagine myself to be suffering now. If I miss this, I really should reduce my hours and use the time to search for work elsewhere.

I need to be vital to my workplace and I am at the branch library. I perform functions you'd never expect. I WD-40 the bookdrop lock mechanism, I remove creatures from the premises interior, I boost morale, I am kick-ass at customer service, not hiring me would be... regrettable.

Still, I cannot hold me breathe but I need change. I need to be human and get time off and paid vacation and all the lovely human things that we all deserve.

I can't stand be adulated but not compensated fairly much longer.

Breaking the cycle of BIBLIOPHILIA

2005-11-07T08:22:00.000-08:00

It isn't easy and most people who love and collect books and practically worship them will be shocked, dismayed and disgusted with me. Verily, I might find myself shunned.

Yesterday, I threw away books. Some of them were starting to smell. Some had pages that were starting to brown. Some of them were perfectly good "gently used" books that are fairly current.

I know there are those of you with shelves and shelves of musty volumes and those with dustless tomes. My own father has a collection of thousands of books that date back to the 1920s. There browning pages sit on shelves my step-mother had built into the garage when he refused to let them go. He thinks he'll read them again.

As if.

He's 75 and he still works full time. It's much more likely that he will drop dead at his computer.

When he dies, we'll get a dumpster. Some of the volumes are rare, it's true. But the rarest book in poor condition really isn't good to anyone.

As long as libraries have books, as long as there are libraries, as long as I have a library card, there's no reason to keep 90 percent of the books that I own. I do have nature books for reference. But it's even time to buy a new dictionary. They've come up with new words since I was in college, "fer shizzle."

I know you're out there. I can hear you sniffling from the book dust. (It's the excretia of the mites that love book dust that makes your sinuses tickle.)

I know it's hard. You were taught reverence for the written word. You were taught to handle books with honor. That's a good thing.

Lugging tons of them with you through your life, letting them sit idle, being selfish with them... that's not.

I looked at the pile on my porch. Worth less than $50 in a library book sale. Our library is overburdened with donated books and other items. There is no room left. Every available space is full.

I did something startling. Cristy and I put them in bags and I put them out on the curb.

Librarians won't tell you, but your musty donations go into the dumpster. Get yourself free. Save them the trip.

6366

I'd rather be sleeping.

2005-11-05T03:00:00.000-08:00

The thought of wrinkled clothes and angst has had me awake for a while now. I slipped downstairs to move clothes from washer to dryer about an hour ago. I have an interview Monday. I don't expect to get the job. I'm not on the "A" List of library folk. It sure takes the pressure off. It makes it easier to look in other places for work, but the truth is that I love the library. I love finding things out and I love helping people get information and entertainment.

I guess that makes me sort of a reporter/concierge by avocation. The difference between working in a library and reporting is that I don't have to write about what I find out.

As for the angst, my buddy Cristy is coming over to my place on Sunday and she's going to help me rid myself of the weighty collection of ridiculous things I am burdened with.

I already feel the pain of tossing away memories and yet... I'm ready. I have so much stuff that there's no room for people.

You know what? I want people. I don't need boxes of stuff that I can't see and don't use.

I go into other people's homes and see how simply they live without a great burden of things. They have places to sit. What a concept!

I hope that Cristy will be gentle with me. I am anxious to be freer. If I could pack my life into my car... WOW. But let's be serious. My clothes, kitchen and cat would be crammed into my little Saturn. Toolbox. Bicycle. Camping gear.

I am visualizing turning my head, nodding consent to throwing things out, waving them away, even bagging them myself.

I bought masking tape so that the bags can be labelled for the trashpickers. I don't want to have to clean up bags that have been torn into before the garbage truck comes. I don't wanna see that stuff. I'm hoping the label "sheets" will inspire "recyclers" to just take the whole bag rather than make ne clean it up.

They really grabbed every bit of the immense staghorn fern that my landlord pushed to the street. I was going to cut a few pieces the next day after mentioning it to friends, but when I went to the house the next day to harvest some "puppies" (as my neighbor calls them) the entire plant was gone.

How can I tell you how big the plant was? I think it would have barely fit inside my little car if the seats were removed and would have weighed about as much as two grown men. That sucker was BIG.

The poor thing was not unlike a piece of bread tossed to fish, with people tugging at it until it finally disappeared.

My neighbor hacked three "puppies" off with his machete for me. One for my step-mom, one for my sister and one for old times sake that I put back up in the tree.

I wish I'd taken two more for my friends, but I suppose they'll live.

I have so many people on my mind. I hung up on Mo last night because Em FINALLY picked up her phone. I just said "Call me back!" only moments after she identified herself and hung up on her. Mo, I'm so sorry!!!

I should have let my house phone ring but I was calling Em on a cell phone and was expecting a message instead of a voice. I was sooo raised by wolves. Wolves? Heck... monkeys.

I need to not be worn out on Monday. That's why I washed clothes at 4 a.m. I need to make good use of time. I need to be rested, crisp, nicely dressed, shiny.

They probably already know who they want for the job of rectifying library card accounts and retrieving inter-library loans. But at least this time, I'm actually getting an interview. None of this denial of an interview (for a full-time position doing actually LESS than what I have been doing for four years) due to "lack of training." (What a crock!)

I'm over trying to find justice on that.

Here's over two hours flown by. No point to trying to sleep now.

6345

little misunderstandings

2005-11-04T11:42:00.000-08:00

About a year or so ago, after Hurricane Frances, I worked with another woman of my "persuasion" from the library who was also helping out FEMA reps. I hadn't really known her before then, but I liked her right off and she appreciated my sense of humor.

I later found out that she was gay and that explained why we got along so well. The few minutes we chatted were filled with fun.

One day, she came to this branch to help us for the day. We chatted as we worked the desk together. She told me about her girlfriend. I enjoyed her presence. She's a good person. We have mutual friends.

She was feeling sick that day and was stuffy in the head. At the end of the day, I wanted to reassure her after all she had revealed to me that I was the only one who knew about her life. In the parking lot as we prepared to leave, I leaned across my car and told her that her life was not a matter of public record.

She looked at me angrily and stated, "I don't care!" She got in her vehicle and drove off. It took me a few moments to realize that she hadn't heard me right.

A little while later she left the library system. I never got the chance to explain and apologize. I even wrote her a note that I was going to ask another co-worker to deliver and even tried to catch her via e-mail.

She probably still thinks I'm an ass. I have always felt bad about it because she could have been a great friend. I hadn't gotten along with anyone so instantly and so well since college.

I miss a friend I never had. Que lastima! (What a shame!)

time capsule on-line

2005-11-04T08:00:00.000-08:00

No foolin'

Send yourself a message in 3, 5, 10 or 20 years!

(I don't make this stuff up.)

http://forbes.codefix.net/capsule/

A response to the previous entry from a very good friend.

2005-11-03T07:58:00.000-08:00

Ahoy, Jean!

Once again, AOL says you don't want me posting to your journal. So,
after several failed attempts to please the AOL gods, I submit this
to you via email.

*******************************
Y'know, sometimes reading you is difficult, because I often closely
identify with where you're at and how you're feeling. This is one of
those sometimes. A cringe-inducing sometime.

My own ribs tightened up reading about your ties to your stuff and the
feelings, memories, it represents. More stuff and things than any one
person ever needs to have, hauled around one place to the next, but I
felt I couldn't let it go. To me, the letting it go was tantamount to
trucking Mom, my grandparents, certain old loves out to the landfill. I
discovered that I had kept nearly every bit of correspondence, no
matter how inane, in addition to the usual cargo of clothes and
ornaments, books and photos, ancient bedding and dusty tools. Things I
never used, never read, never brought into the light of day. But
their physical presence enabled me (I thought) to maintain my slipping
memories. The memories might fail, but the love never does.

It took the better part of a summer, going through these things. Most
of them were jettisoned: donated to the library yard sale, given to
Goodwill, passed out to friends or just tossed. Difficult though it
was - there was a lot of remembrance, explanation, anecdotes, tall
tales
and bleary-eyed snuffling - I felt liberated when the last empty box
was shredded. I kept a few select doo dads, but unless the item in
question has usable life (like Grandpa's tools, which I use nearly
every day now that I have them out of storage), I chose to let the
stuff go. It was a wonderfully freeing experience, right up until my
brother left his abusive marriage and passed on all the family stuff he
had in his house back to me. *sigh* Now the cellar is full of furniture
and boxes again, all of which need to be sorted through. I don't dread
it this time, because when I tossed through the last load, I never lost
the love.

You wrote: "What am I missing? I'm not rich or into dress up, but I
have what I need and a bit to share. Where do I fail?"

You're missing nothing. You're bright - scary bright - funny,
sensitive, considerate, generous of both heart and spirit, aware of
both self and others. If you fail at all, my friend, it is in selling
yourself short, settling for will-do instead of demanding your due.
That so-and-so doesn't respond to your entreaties; that whomeverthehell
manipulates your feelings to keep you handy for feeding her ego; that
whassherface merely uses you at her convenience does not reflect
anything wrong with you, Jean. That's them. Their bullshit. Their
behavior. All of us have enough baggage of our own without readily
volunteering to porter that of our would-be lovers.

You're nobody's bell hop, babe. Not even for the people whose stuff
you're still carting around. Believe it.

Unity87

40 on the 12

2005-11-03T02:48:00.000-08:00

The electricity is back on at my home. I am still staying at my parent's for a little while longer at least.

I am taking advantage of the emptiness of the place to clean it as much as I am able. The clutter has got to go, and it's very difficult to get rid of things even though I have no use for them.

I'm entitled to keep a few things, but it is ridiculous and counter-productive to keep everything. I've just been burdened with the things of my family's past lives. I'm ready to have less so that I am more ready to move about with a great burden of things.

I want someone else to help me release things that I know I don't need.

I collected stamps as a kid. My collection is probably worth a little over $500.

I have a few model cars. No one knows about that fascination of mine (until now), but the rule is that I have to be totally taken with the car, that's why I only have a few. Is it very valuable? No.

And then my boxes are full of doo-dads and knick-knacks and Christmas ornaments and books and all kinds of stuff.

I don't have the time for a yard sale, and the truth is I don't have the patience for people pawing through things in my front yard, either. Half this town knows me from the library, I don't need some of them knowing where I live!

I'm the only one hanging on to the memories the things represent. That's probably because I am by myself. I no longer find much comfort in my mother's dress or ornaments my grandmother made. My memories are empty and my new ones are sketchy because they go largely unshared.

Writing that was like having someone drag their nails across my heart. Em seems to be blowing me off. I don't understand how people who seem to have strong principles, intelligence and profess to care for people can just decide to not respond to phone calls, e-mails.

I realize that Hurricane Wilma did a lot of damage and things are still messed up in South Florida, but I know that Em's voicemail was full and now it's not.

I care for and trust people and they suddenly decide to just cut me off. It makes me wonder what is so bad about me? They want me in their beds, but not in their lives. What am I doing wrong???

Talking with Cristy gives me some insight.

I didn't give Vicki space she needed. I know that. She would have dumped me anyway because she changed her mind about loving me. I acted badly because I was so hurt and so confused and so worried about her. Communication was bad there.

Em is sweet and funny and smart. I loved the way we fit together when we hugged. I loved the way she teased me. But she has a lot of physical problems and a lot of emotional stress. I thought having me in her life was good for her. "You're always there for me," she said. That hasn't changed.

I do understand though... she has children and they have major issues. I can understand her needing to put us aside.

I can't understand no communication whatsoever from a woman who used to call and talk to me for hours.

Alas.

Somewhere out there, there has got to be a woman who is smart, patient, free and willing to love and be loved. Communication is something you work on together.

Maybe it's my destiny to be alone. I'm really starting to mind being alone. I didn't use to get lonely. I'm lonely.

I've had the wonderful feeling of someone who I thought loved me sleeping with her head on my heart.

I've helped lovers feel good about themselves. I helped two of them quit smoking for good (thus far, anyway.)

I'm willing to share all that I am and all that I have and anything else that comes along.

Okay, yes... I've been alone a long time and might take some time adapting to togetherness, but I can do it. I'm willing to accept that I am or can be self-centered. Who isn't, really?

What am I missing? I'm not rich or into dress up, but I have what I need and a bit to share. Where do I fail?

I wish these women who blow me off had the gumption and the kindness to tell me.

I know a lot of my journal seems like whining but I'm just laying out what I feel. I don't think that's wrong.

6301

I haven't played reversi in over a week!

2005-10-30T14:31:00.000-08:00

Last night, I painted my face for my Halloween costume and intended to go out. Then I realized that no one had told me when the official day for Halloween was.

Monday is the day but Saturday is the day it should be. I went late to the animal hospital. The doctor was there. She didn't care that I was late. "I think it's better for the dogs," she said. Then she invited me to her house for dinner. She's sweet like that. She said that everyone else at her house was sitting down to eat when she had to go to the hospital to help some folks out with their pet.

I paid no attention to what she was doing but went to the kennel. I was late for a very important date. There were only 5 or 6 dogs so it went fast.

Then I came back to my parent's house for a short bit and then went out to my favorite of the three gay bars in the next county. (I think one is only gay on Tuesday. LOL)

There are two full-time gay bars. One has had many gay incarnations. I liked it best when it had couches to lounge on. If I have a comfortable place to sit, I'm good.

But I digress. So I went in and had to remove my mask to gain access. I got water and a seat and ogled people. The show started and I watched a few routines, then I left.

There was a dark angel seated before me, a lovely girl, but large. I was tempted to flirt but big girls are always breaking my heart because of all their personal issues. It's time to let a thinner woman crush me, just to prove it's all relative.

The whole point of this damn journal is to release everything, to empty my soul, regardless. To hold nothing back.

The other part of the secret, in hindsight, is to not tell anyone you personally know about it. I realize that now.

Library co-workers know my innermost heart. Thatmakes me... vulnerable.

Initially Cristy was wowed by the things I revealed. Now I bet she doesn't even read me. I'm just lucky that she is still a very caring friend who would do just about anything within reason for me. She and her family are a great comfort to me and I try not to take too much advantage of it although if you let me sprawl on your couch and you play with my hair, like Cristy and her mom do... well... that can only encourage more lounging. Then you always feed me when I come over and you might as well put a collar on me.

The Bird used to call me her "pet neighbor."

Today I lolled in bed until about ten watching a light-hearted movie called "Saving Face" (about two successful Chinese-American lesbians in Flushing, NY), then I decided that maybe I could get my computer up and running instead of attempting to use the ones downstairs belonging to my parents.

I found a friend online and asked her to meet me for lunch. That was nice and I'm happy that she said "Okay" when I asked her. It's good to have single friends who can be free somewhat spontaneously.

I haven't heard from Em and I really don't know if things are really bad for her, if she's sick again or, worst case, she's blowing me off. I can't let myself go nuts again over someone hurting me. The good thing about Em is that she never said "I love you." She never gave me false hope, though she did say that there would be times when we could actually have more time together.

Tomorrow is Halloween and I'm going to join my friends and be the werewolf. With little kids around, it'll be all the more fun. Then it's back to the grindstone. I have two weeks coming up with no day off. Yikes! If I don't write in my journal before the end of November, you'l know I dropped dead from exhaustion.

I realized something the other day, which is: why heterosexuals mostly have sex at night. Because men fall asleep....

It took me this long? Oh, brother!

(OK, yeah, I've fallen asleep after, too....)

The Princess Dream

2005-10-29T09:50:00.000-07:00

This morning I had an unusual dream. I was talking to a woman who apparently had been a landlady of mine at some point in the past. We were just sitting and talking about things and she was telling me what happened to various people in the area since I left.

A tall, thinnish woman leaned in and greeted her and saw me and said, "I'll talk to you later," and ducked back out. She said the woman's name. The first name was familiar but the last name was different than I remembered.

I think I asked if she was formerly known as so-and-so and she said, "Yes. She married herself a princess."

I was kind of blown away at that. "What???"

"Yeah, she met a princess when she went to... (I forget where she said. It was someplace sub-tropical... perhaps somewhere in the Keys.)

"And they got married??? WOW."

I sat quietly and pondered it for a moment... the dream faded some and the barking of the scottie dogs from the yard next door woke me.

Dreams sometimes mean something and sometimes are just the product of the brains disposal system. Lately though, the only dreams I remember remembering had some significance. This dream, I think, was just the by-product of my wish for an old someone.

I still haven't been able to reach my newer someone. God only knows what's happened to her. All I can do is wait.

6253

Was it Wilma or is it us?

2005-10-29T08:56:00.000-07:00

I can't tell if we've all been hardened a little, or if Wilma, who did indeed kick some arse, was just not all that bad.

Oh, there's destruction and difficulty here to be sure, but somehow... it just doesn't seem to matter as much.

A lot of people are saying that Wilma was worse than last years "Spin Sisters," but I'm thinking they just forget easily.

Much of the recovery is going more smoothly, in my opinion anyway. Maybe it's just because we had an idea of what to expect this time around. Maybe it's because the physical landscape was already decimated. Maybe it's because we now realize that ignorance was the cause of some of our suffering before.

I went to Cristy's this evening and saw that they had sliced their screens to let the wind blow through. Cristy had footage of the fury of the wind whipping the torn screen and blowing the treetops horizontally eastward.

I woke up worn out. I think the shock of getting back to a somewhat normal state in a matter of three days after the hurricane, coupled with the anxiety and the crazy day we had Wednesday running errands and dealing with the car had something to do with it.

This time, I'm not that upset about not being in my own humble rental. I'm comfortable at Dad's, having taken over my sister's room. I paid next month's rent even though I won't be there for a while. Someone else might request a break in the rent but I believe that a landlord will be good to you as long as you show respect and pay the bill.

Come to think of it, I really want to do something nice for the guy who found the wire in the first place.

I should be upset but today I was happy. I can't help but feel fortunate right now. I have what I need to survive. My car is running. My landlord was out to the trailer fairly soon after the storm. My job is still there. Losing a day's work was so worth taking precautions to keep the car from burning up. My friends are okay. There are gas lines but we still seem to have plenty of the stuff around. I had a warm shower this morning. I'm feeling blessed.

For the record, if you live along a coast and are in a gas shortage... try a marina. The gas costs more but there aren't likely to be any lines.

***************************************************************

Today after work I stopped home. I was heading back out when I saw a woman pushing her car off of US 1. I couldn't stop to help her because it wasn't safe but I swung back around and reached her after she had pushed the car into the sand and was starting to walk away.

I pulled up behind her and turned on my hazard lights.

"Do you need a phone?" She started walking back toward me and we met. She refused the phone but caught herself from crying when she said, "Could you just give me a ride home?"

I dumped my refugee debris out of the front seat and she got in.

"Hi, I'm Jean. I work at the library."

"I''m Pat, I'm a hairdresser at a shop in _______."

"That's ironic. Just moments ago I was thinking I need a haircut."

"Sure. That's the least I could do, " she answered.

I thanked her but refused, saying that I had things to do.

So I drove her home and let her out and went on my way.

I wonder if I'll ever even see her again.

Of the fews things I know to be true, the idea that we have to help each other is in the soup.

And here's a toast to the power company guys both local and out-of-state. I beep and "blink" and carry on when I see them. Love your work, buddies.

And my thoughts also go out tonight to the sick, the poor, the people still dealing with this huricane's mess and healthcare workers... Bless 'em.

I was surprised tonight to find bread in the grocery store. : o Lucky me.

"like being in a blender"

2005-10-26T19:38:00.000-07:00

That's how one of my co-workers described the sensation of watching hurricane Wilma from half-boarded windows.

Thanks, we're okay.

Yeah, it was worse than predicted but crossing the warm Gulf of Mexico is enough to get one's blood up.

Floridians are tougher now, wiser.

Gas lines. Emptying grocery stores. An all-day parade of people in line for ice and whatever food there is from the National Guard. Communication fiascoes.

It feels like a miracle to be typing into my journal.

I'll be out of my trailer for a while. Wilma walloped my water system and ate my awnings. She made the carpet damp but not squishy.

My landlord came over and took out what was left of the shed, all but one of my trees and cranked off one of the majestic arms of my shady oak AND threw out my faithful, innocuous leafy plant that's been valiantly growing for six years AND my lily AND the humongous staghorn fern which was probably worth thousands. Alas, alas. Gonna do that might as well put in astroturf. That might be the worst of it all for me.

The door switch on my car started beeping when the door was open. Because of that, I wore out my battery leaving the lights on. I had to get a new battery. Replacing the battery triggered the car alarm to go off again. My remote fobs for the alarm were bad which led to me getting my car alarm pulled. That adventure led the alarm tech to discover exposed wire which would have created one charred AOL blogger. (I didn't mention the tow truck driver. Here's to him, and the battery guy and the alarm guy.)

You never know where your blessings are hidden.

Now if I can only reach my Em.

Update: Waiting for Wilma

2005-10-23T08:41:00.000-07:00

Four carloads.

I went back this morning for the refrigerated food and a few final things, including my bargain kitty litter and the fan that pushes air through my house. I gave up and left my Fiestaware in the china cabinet and in the dish drainer. I'm tired of the overwhelmment of things. As an afterthought, I turned around and went back to bag up my DVDs and some favorite videotapes.

I was thinking that if tornadic activity blows away the trailer that I rent and all the rest of the stuff of our old lives, maybe I could stay here. If there's no rent, I could save up for one of those small trailers to squeeze my stuff into to haul along every time I need to evacuate. One trip. Easy.

The county is closed Monday. That means I will work all week. ---> Grumble.

Now I'm "hunkered down" in my father's house. If I hadn't spoken, he would still be blasting minute-by-minute coverage of the storm. I hate senseless noise. It's not as if you can do anything about it.

I'd rather be home, thinking about whatever I'd be thinking about and probably staying in bed trying to compose something wonderful and petting my cat when she comes close. Instead, my cat is upstairs in a closed room due to the collie who loves to snuffle for nuggets and bark at alien life forms. Unfortunately, the extra "baby gate" went to college with my younger sister's cat.

I had a phone message from my older sister at home this morning. Some message about how I must be out having fun on a Saturday night. Yeah, evacuating myself was a blast.

I did go over late to the Halloween party put on by one of the receptionists from the animal hospital. Not knowing that the party was back on by 4 in the afternoon on Saturday, I loaned my costume to the library branch manager for her daughter who had just found out about a Harry Potter-themed party.

My costume is not a Harry Potter costume per se, but a similar character is in the books. I'm sorry I am not at liberty to divulge what my costume is because I want it to be a surprise to my friends when I finally do get to wear it.

I had a black mask and my friends provided a black cloak and a pair of sparkly red horns. Suddenly I was the devil in disguise. (Do ya hear Elvis?)

I don't know what to do next. Go backto sleep or take advantage of the luxury of being where there is a bathtub!

I know. Take a bath, go hibernate with the cat in the central air, and read a book.

Yeah.

Judi... Thank you. I don't talk to you as often as I could, but I always appreciate your kind comments. (My "prize" was in the very first carload. I'm so glad that I hadn't thrown out your packaging. It was a drag to be taking it off display to go on the run again.)

6195

on being planted, on being a plant OR it's not easy being green, but it's not that hard, either

2005-10-22T02:46:00.000-07:00

http://journals.aol.com/judithheartsong/newbeginning/entries/1601

Ya' know, when I was a kid, that was on a poster in the hall of my Sunday School. It was "Bloom where you are planted" and I thought about it quite a lot. To me, it meant to thrive whatever your situation, to make the best out of whatever you got.

I was hoping I'd spring up and be as gloriously mature and happy as I aged as I thought my sister (five years older than me) and her friends were. I'm still waiting to bloom, but maybe I have in someone else's eyes. That poster's thoughts didn't kill me though. As I grew from 13 to 30 on a patch of land full of wildflowers, native plants and tall pines, I thought less about being the image of someone else and more about standing tall and being strong and healthily "green."
Each plant and tree was beautiful of itself and together the trees and shrubs and flowers complemented and complimented each other.
Have I bloomed where I was planted? Well, ... some days I flow. Some days everyone seems to adore me. It's all about the others blooming around me though. Without them, I can't see myself. My co-workers, my buddies and even you show me myself. You'd think that would be enough to lift me to a higher plane. It should.

Now I have a younger sister, thanks to my father remarrying. I watch her. She's pretty and smart and so wise at 20 that she has advised me how to cope with some things. Me! Nineteen years difference in our ages. Yet I see in her DOUBT and I wish that there was a magic remedy.

She doesn't think she's pretty because she is big, I mean genetically healthily Germanically tall and full. There's no Barbie doll in her. Boys hit on her and she shrugs it off. Her romantic experiences are just that to her. I don't think she feels worthy and yet she can be so very stuck up.

It hurts me seeing her doubt her worth. She has always had money, I never have had much. That doesn't make any difference between us. We both are valuable, loving people. We are both "worthy" of everything. We both have something to offer.

She can charm a crowd and seems to flow through a room like a fresh breeze, stopping to shine on each person in the room. She holds court with this little group and that as I stand by, just awed by her ability not only to talk to anyone but to impress them.

Me, I don't do crowds. I don't speak freely. I will talk to people but if I'm not comfortable, I won't talk much. I am generally content to stand back and be helpful to the hostess. If there's something to do as a group, I participate and add to the fun. I know my presence is appreciated by those who know me because they tell me so. People who don't really know me may have a negative perception and think me anti-social... until they are around me long enough to know that I'm just quiet, not stupid or totally boorish.

I am somewhat boorish at times more as a reaction to superficiality than a result of ill-breeding. I can't help it. I own disdain for things that waste my time, like a smile and seeming interest when you can feel that the person attending you is not for real. My feeling is if you don't like me and don't want to know me, leave me alone! However, if you can see me and want to see more of me, come on over ... kick your shoes off. Let's walk together.

When you meld with someone, when what you share seems to fill you, when it's as if you were creating flowers and trees, walking through a white page and leaving a trail of color... Ahhhh.

That's when I feel myself open my petals.

6180

"I get by with a little help from my friends."

2005-10-18T20:10:00.000-07:00

http://journals.aol.com/judithheartsong/newbeginning/entries/1595

This is all you really need to know about me. Without you, I'm less than whole.

I look to my friends for spiritual uplift, advice, companionship, moral support, understanding and grace.

Affection is in the way I'm greeted by my friends and the way Cristy tilts her head and looks at me when I join the gang on her couch.

Cristy

Friendship is implied in the "flippant" or "sassy" banter between me and the library's branch manager, or in the way the children's librarian always teases me about "paybacks" when I torment her with playful verbal jabs. Friendship is Josh and Joe IMing me at 11 p.m. on a weeknight.

I didn't understand friendship when I was a child. It seemed to me that everyone should always love each other. It was hard to comprehend that people come and go in your life. I thought they all were keepers. I thought we all were family. There was a very wise child that I worked with at a local elementary school who pointed out that the word friend has an "end" in it.

Friendship has been defined as a single soul inhabiting two bodies. I wouldn't go that extreme, but I would say that there is definitely a psycho-spiritual connection between people that draws them together.

Being befriended saved my life. I cannot envision where I might be today if I hadn't been guided by other young lesbians when I left for college at the age of 17. They became my surrogate family. They gave me a reason to keep going. They taught me that I wasn't a freak and that I wasn't alone. They taught me that I didn't have to accomplish everything on my own and also that I was capable of doing much more than I thought I could in the way of self-reliance. They wanted to be there for me. They didn't ask me for anything. They gave me shelter, they fed me, body and soul. They took me with themwhen they ran errands from our woodsy, small town campus into civilization. They loaned me books that filled me with pride in what we were. They gave me the words for the things I felt, the things I wanted, the things I needed. They gave me the word for myself. I'd always felt it, but I didn't know how to say it. Once I learned the words, they helped me learn to say them and claim them as my own. More than kindness and nurturing, simply having them in my life saved my life.

That's me on the left, on top of a mountain in Maine, checking out the map with Henry, Bruce and Sue Q. circa 1984 +/-

If you read my journal you know that I am a natural-born brooder. I believe in chaos theory and negative entropy; that is, that there is order in the universe though it seems disordered and that life drives itself to continue into the future. In spite of myself and the depression I fight, I try to see what there is to be happy about and when I look it is the people in my life, and the natural world, that causes me to respire and fill my heart with more energy to keep pumping.

It is my friends who tell me that they are disgusted by the way I allow my girlfriends to treat me but support my right to make a fool of myself again and again. It is my friends who thank me for writing, thank me for loving them.

When I look at the person I was in college, truth-bending, selfish and anal, I wonder at how they just kept on loving me. I don't know if I would have put up with me.

It was my friends who brought me out of my shell and onto a stage to recite my poetry. It was my friends who taught me to dream with my eyes open and to see without tunnel vision.

It is my friends who continue to teach me how to live and be human. I had a friend, Jennifer, who lived by a sign in her room, "Feed my lambs." She told me, "We are all each other's host and each other's guest." It was Ivan G. at college who told me, "We are all the same."

I find my friends everywhere I look. I have local true blue hang-out friends and chat friends and journal friends and work friends and a lover-friend and customer friends and stranger friends. I had the warmest chat today with a lady I was in line with at an office supply store. I noticed that in her 70s she had the humor to wear a silver medallion inscribed with "What if the hokey-pokey is really what it's all about?" She's my kind of people. I may never see her again but we shared kinship for 10 minutes and it made us both feel good.

It reminds me not only of the Beetles' song from which this essay takes it's title but also of one of the closing scenes of themovie made from one of my favorite books, "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe" by Fannie Flagg.

In the movie Jessica Tandy, as Virginia "Ninny" Threadgoode, is standing on the main road through Whistle Stop, Alabama. Kathy Bates, as Evelyn Couch, is helping Ninny come to terms with losing her home and telling Ninny that she has a home with Evelyn and her husband.

The story is multi-layered and at it's heart is the value, richness and catharsis of story-telling.

The two women find a fresh jar of honey and a note from Idgie on the Ruth's grave.

((And by the way, if you think Ninny and Idgie are one and the same you really weren't paying attention.))

"Do you know what I think life is about?," says Ninny. "Friends. Best friends."

I go for that.

It reminds me, too, of the recurring theme of the old television series, "Xena, Warrior Princess."

Xena didn't need her friends, except to save her soul from eternal loneliness and damnation.

Over and over again, it's repeated in the final seasons: "Love is the way."

That's what I'm saying.

"No man is an island,no man stands alone
Each man's joy is joy to me
Each man's grief is my own
We need one another, so I will defend
Each man as my brother
Each man as my friend"

The Laws of Life

2005-10-18T06:53:00.000-07:00

My stepsister won this essay contest in her senior high school year and big bucks for college. I can't remember the sponsors name but he started the Friendly's restaurant chain.

Enjoy.

Laws of Life Essay Grand Prize Winner 2003

Thanksgiving Day is defined as an American national holiday, set apart for giving thanks to God, celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November. Today society has acclaimed "Thanksgiving" as time spent with the family to celebrate the first shared dinner in 1606 by Pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts. As a family holiday, it represents a time to cherish love for family and each other. The day is celebrated with a meal of roasted turkey, sweet and mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and other various foods that have been made into the "traditional feast." However, not all American families are the same. For me and my family Thanksgiving is not traditional.

My heritage is typical -- white middle class with an extended family. I would guess that most of my peers and their family have no idea what it is like to be a minority; especially at Thanksgiving. But, for me being a minority is not that unusual. My mother, a wonderful person, who is enchanted by other cultures as well as being a magnificent historian, has made such family traditions and holidays different from what American society would call normal suburban holidays. Before I was born she was involved with cultural education at the Brighton Seminole Reservation, seventeen miles west of Okeechobee, Florida. She met and came to love this unique culture and met some of the most incredible people -- like the Jones family. Shula, an elder Florida Seminole, the matriarch of her clan, took to my mother and graciously gave our family an introduction into her culture.

Each Thanksgiving, ever since I can remember, has been spent with this wonderful family. This Thanksgiving holiday is not exactly what everyone else experiences. It's hard to do the same traditional things when you're 40 miles from normal civilization, and in a completely different culture. Our host, Shula Jones is the mother of eight, grandmother and great-grandmother to dozens of children, and is the oldest of the Jones branch of the Panther Clan. Her large family gathers for one week in the Florida hammocks camping and experiencing nature and family at its fullest. I remember when I was younger the feeling of resentment that I had toward my mother. I was ignorant and spoiled to think that being the only white girl was uncomfortable and weird. I definitely did not understand the privilege of my experience. I wanted my life to be like the movies and TV shows portrayed it to be. You know the traditional family Thanksgiving spent around a huge dining table, with an abundance of television, family and food. Instead I was freezing my tail off in a distant land with a distant culture, and the only thing I could do was sit by the fire and wish I had dark skin, black hair, and could understand the Creek language. For years this is what I thought of my not-so-traditional Thanksgiving.

I now realize my experiences with the Seminole Indians are truly a treasure that should be shared. My first memory was watching the elders cook sofkee over the large cooking fire in the middle of the tall cooking chickee in the middle of the camp. Young children playing with baby animals and running happily to and fro, while their young parents (most my age) laugh and share stories. The first night is spent setting up the campsite. Men get the hunting gear ready and the women pitch tents or settle into their chickee, the traditional Seminole dwelling built of cypress poles, thatched palm frond roof and a raised floor. I guess you can say that not much has changed in the traditional Seminole setting. Teenagers bring out the four-wheelers and the horses. Our family, of course is different. We bring tons of packing equipment, a camper trailer, two tents and lots of things to keep us occupied for five days. I guess it's the "white man" for you: too much, too often and too wasteful! The first night my brother and I usually keep mostly to ourselves because of racial differences. We are, for the first time, a minority.

By the second day, we settle in and enjoy being part of the group. Nights are spent in a big party. The men hunt, or drive around in the big swamp buggies looking for game, while the women talk around the never ending camp fire, and the children find different ways to busy themselves, mostly playing "manhunt" or hide and seek in the dark. The festivities go all night and the party doesn't end until the last person falls asleep -- usually when morning breaks and the breakfast cooking begins. Racial differences are put aside, and we all come together and have a great tine, just being friends and family.

The following days are spent tending to cattle, fishing, and swimming in the old mine pit. Not being much of a cattle person, I tried to help as much as I could in rounding up the young calves, all destines to become steers. After rounding up the calves, young boys straddle the poor, castrated calves and ride until they fall off. This I must say, is an odd tradition, but one that is cherished and honored just as much as those traditions of eating turkey and watching television.

When Thanksgiving Day arrives we, just as other families do, gather children, friends and elders for a shared meal. For so many years I spent this day ignorantly whining to myself that I didn't know what I was eating. The various types of cultural foods were not at all strange to the wonderful people that I was eating with, and that was when I realized that it doesn't matter what foods are on the table, or who you are with, it was my mother's lesson -- the gift of acceptance. She taught me that it didn't matter what you ate, who you prayed to, or what color your hair and skin is because people will love you for who you are, and that your race is just something that helps make who you are not what you are.

So, this past Thanksgiving as I departed from my friends and wished them well, until next year, I left with the greatest lesson in my life. Throughout my life something extraordinary has happened. I began to grow up and realize while sitting by a campfire under a palm thatched chickee, I was participating in something that not many (non Indian) people get to experience. and that this is truly special. My mother taught me a most important lesson, one which should be spread throughout the world: To accept other cultures, and avoid the feeling of trying to be the norm and embrace other traditions and values.

That acceptance of all cultures is, in my opinion, the most important Law of Life, because if you don't first accept who you are then embrace the culture and lifestyles of others, then that sets you back and sets the world back. For it is cultural intolerance that is the basis of so many world issues, and I know that just the smallest thing helps. Whether it is volunteering for social reform, working for the underprivileged, or just embracing another culture, it will bring the world closer and makes life a little more enjoyable for all. It is also my opinion that many of the world's problems could be solved if people just exercised what my mother taught me to believe; that acceptance of other cultures and embracing others is as true as being yourself.

In conclusion, I would like to thank my mother for the greatest Law of Life, and for those who allowed me to grow as a person and make me understand that it doesn't matter what society claims to be a tradition, it's the family that makes it and a single person who embraces it.

Where is she?

2005-10-18T05:56:00.000-07:00

Last night my sister in college IMed to tell me she had dreamt that I got married.

(Just a plug for her school.)

She said that everyone was very happy for me and naturally her mother was all over the place, tending to things and chatting with everyone.

She said my bride was, I forget the exact words, but she was appealling and sweet.

Hmmm. I don't think of my sister as visionary. I've never known her to be psychic at all.

The idea of it, the ideal of it... makes my heart ache. I've begun to lose hope that anyone will ever love me enough for that sort of relationship.

The woman I'm seeing seems very fond of me, but she doesn't love me. I know it when I hear it and I believe in saying it often. I've held back from saying it more to this one. Once bitten.... She just laughs when I tell her I love her. I think she is content just to have me to talk to. My rose petal peach skin heart just takes it all too hard.

Anyway...

wasn't it lovely? My young step-sister dreams about my happiness.

It just made me think about a song Elvis sang in one of his movies. I think it was "Roustabout."

Follow that dream, I gotta follow that dream
Keep a-movin, move along, keep a moving
I've got to follow that dream wherever that dream may lead
I've got to follow that dream to find the love I need

When your heart gets restless, time to move along
When your heart gets weary, time to sing a song
But when a dream is calling you,
There's just one thing that you can do

Well, you gotta follow that dream wherever that dream may lead
You gotta follow that dream to find the love you need

Keep a-movin, move along, keep a moving

Got to find me someone whose heart is free
Someone to look for my dream with me
And when I find her I may find out
Just what my dreams are all about

I've got to follow that dream wherever that dream may lead
I've got to follow that dream to find the love I need

I've got to follow that dream wherever that dream may lead
I've got to follow that dream to find the love I need

Keep a-movin, move along
Keep a-movin, move along
Keep a-movin, move along

6093

COSMIC WIMP-OUT

2005-10-17T20:01:00.000-07:00

Has anyone ever heard of this game?

My exe's best bud used to talk about it all the time but we never got a chance to play.

What's it all about? (If you know, write Virage65@aol.com, por favor.)

Can anyone enlighten me? I just happened to think of it now.

It's funny, ever since that previous revelation about the ex, I have found myself not thinking about her and not even wanting to, but her friend has been so kind... I think about what a nice person she is and what a shame it is that the two of us can't be better friends because of the situation.

I will just have to wonder what her boyfriend's family's farm is like, how his dog, Batman, will act when he smells the bunnies, and if I would have been any good at Cosmic Wimp-out.

Ah, well. That's the rub.

Peace.

In praise of MEN

2005-10-17T17:18:00.000-07:00

Yeah. That's right. Wanna make something of it? Who says a lesbian can't admire a man? Not me!

I have just been thinking how much I enjoy the journals of some of the boys here in J-Land.

I want to give them their props.

NJLittleBear

He was the first person to ever IM me as a result of my journal. I haven't given him nearly enough attention. Sorry, Bear. :/

screaminremo303

Here's a guy who's honest and humorous. The truth is out there, and it's pretty funny.

chasferris

Here's a guy in an old folk's home with an electric scooter and a digital camera detailing life on the far end. Warm. Very warm.

goldenchildnc

Just read him!

grofsand

This is a sweet, sensitive, very kind man who lives in the area where I grew up.

gaboatman

A real gentleman.

egino11fly

A pilot who shares the world openly.

Wait! Wait! I almost forgot:

thelovetrain

He's new to me, but I'm getting to know and like him.

OK, these aren't all the guys, but these are the guys that I've found that I enjoy reading.

Show me. Who's moved you?

Whoa! Stepping away from AOL for a moment, I present the two young men in my life who encourage me and give me pride in the people who are going to take over very soon. They are my co-workers, but even better than that, they are my friends:

Josh's journal

Josh's Homepage

AND

Joe's journal

and the very clever library page he started,

Amusing Things that Patrons Do and Say in the Library Environment

Let's here it for the boys!

6077

fragility

2005-10-16T01:32:00.000-07:00

I'm awake from a nightmare generated from a mistake. It was more like a vision because every time I knew I was waking from it, it kept coming back.

Last night at the kennel, I gave insulin to the wrong dog. I called the doctor and we tested the dog's blood and fed her puppy food laced with sugar (dextrose). The doctor took her to the emergency clinic for observation overnight.

It's a very bad mistake that I have never before made in the eight years that I've been at the clinic. It made me think that maybe it's time for me to resign.

My nightmare started as a dream of siblings in a house. One was in his room and not letting anyone in but I knocked and spoke softly and was allowed near. (I was one of the siblings.) The child was bloodied and bruised and raw in places. As the dream progressed of me trying to get this child to the doctor, the child became small and as fragile as the dried bones of a bird.

This dream didn't frighten me. It was my guilt chiding me, laying weights in my heart. The dog could have died. I have confidence that it will survive and probably not suffer too ill an effect (affect?)

Still....

I have to say that my people know me. When I told Cristy what happened via IM, she asked if I was okay. She already knew that the doctor and I had done everything we could for the dog. She also knows that I take things like this very hard.

And the doctor... she has no notion of firing me.

I thought about the resignation, then I thought about the employees who come and go at the hospital. I thought about how quick I was to call the doctor and how responsibly I own my mistakes.

Yeah, I f***ed up pretty big. Yeah, I feel awful about what may yet happen to the dog, to the owner and to the doctor.

The hospital will eat the cost of emergency care. I feel pretty bad about that, too.

I kept trying to find out who had done the damage to the child in the awful dream. The child wouldn't say, even as it became as fragile as paper.

I know now it was me. It was me who hurt my animal brother.

6045

Go Fluffy!

2005-10-14T15:49:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to the Improv in West Palm Beach to see this gentleman. I went because I saw him perform last year and I laughed like crazy.

His comedy is pretty clean, actually. He didn't even cuss until after enjoying some of the drinks that the audience keep plying him with. The show went almost three hours we were all having so much fun.

What's my point? I guess I just want to endorse him. If he comes back next year, I'll probably go again.

Go Fluffy!

www.fluffyguy.com

Just a note to Gabriel: If I was straight you'd be in big trouble!

Laughter is so sexy.

Attack of the Killer Toilets

2005-10-14T15:18:00.000-07:00

The night that I went driving to keep myself distracted, I stopped into a Barnes & Noble to look for a blank book.

I headed for the ladies room and found a queue of ladies standing back against the door and two stalls standing vacant. I queried if someone was going to use the empty toilets, but they sort of mumbled something about the little girl that was huddled by one of the women being afraid.

I walked into the stall they pointed to and flushed the toilet. Problem solved, I thought. I walked back to my place in line and said, "Go ahead."

Nope.

So I walked into the handicapped stall, which was clean except for toilet paper on the floor. I said, "This one is free... just some paper on the floor."

Nope.

"Okay, whatever...."

I was chagrined and I REALLY wanted to say something to the child and her parent.

The child was no more than eight years old, if that.

I wanted to say to her mother, "How do you expect her to survive if she can't even pee in public? You've got her afraid of a toilet!"

I can't imagine what else the child fears. I would have liked to have told the girl that the world is pretty big and full of lots and lots and lots of things and that if you fear everything you'll never cut the muster.

I found a book and went on my way, but here it is a week later and I am still thinking about being so young and so afraid of something so ridiculously liveable, conquerable. Oi.

If you are terrified of toilets, carry disinfectant.

This is all about the fear of death, you know, but if you spend your time fearing germs you won't ever live.

2005-10-14T04:28:00.000-07:00

This morning, Joe, my fellow blogger and co-worker asked me if I was "trying to have one of those blogs that everyone reads" because of the previous entry in which I asked for links to favorite journals.

Joe's question was interesting. No, honestly, I don't need to be too popular. I don't have time to talk to a lot of people. I don't think I want to. I really am a wallflower, however I do like it when people leave comments in response to what I share. More readers means more comments (because I really don't get that many.)

So far, no one has sent me a link that's new to me, but they have sent some really good ones.

Joe just joined my branch. (Congratulations, by the way, Joe, on becoming a real person.) ((Real people: regular full-time employees with benefits.))

Joe started as a page about six years ago. He's paid his library dues. Now he's a number II. LOL (That's a jab because I know he'll read this.)

There was no school today and there will be no school tomorrow. Naturally, we were just about over-run by the kids. It made the day drag because you can't get enough done when you have to keep stopping to ask kids not to run, talk loudly, eat and drink, or hit each other.

I think that if we were brilliant and rich, we'd build separate kid places and let them trash the place and yell and holler and whatever else they want to do, thereby freeing up the library computers for actual study, communication and old-fashioned READING.

The thing is that we do not want to keep the kids out. They need and deserve resources and a place to be. Legally, we don't have to allow them in under the age of 16 without supervision. But someday these kids will have jobs and money and if they have bad experience now, they might not join Friends Groups when they retire. They might go elsewhere to keep themselves jacked up on entertainment and to socialize. If they are sitting in the library, they aren't usually committing crimes or putting themselves in harm's way.

My problem isthat unlike most of my co-workers, I am not a former school teacher. I have no children. I'm used to quiet and I'm old school when it comes to respecting your elders. The crux is that you have to respect the kids. My problem is that there are confines of how you can speak to them. When I deal with members of my family, it's on an earthier level that they respond to.

Different age kids respond to different things. Most kids who are under a certain age will stop if you say, "Excuse me, I need you to stop running, please." Then there are older kids and you need to be apologetic. "I'm sorry but we need to keep this card catalog free for people who need to look up books." Now we get to the ones who need consequences for their actions. "If we find you viewing porn again, you will lose your library privilege for the day."

Me, I want to communicate with them like I talk to my teenage brother. "Hey Bub, what the heck are you doing? Do you think that's a good idea?" If I can't get his attention, I tickle him. If he looks upset or tired, I rub his back or stroke his hair before I even say anything.

There isn't time enough to spend with these kids to develop closer relationships so you know them well enough to really communicate. You can't touch them. And to speak to them on the street level could get you into trouble.

I started this entry last night. Today is Friday. Two more days of being mobbed by kids... pray for me.

6006

Suspiciously warm and fuzzy and other stuff

2005-10-12T06:31:00.000-07:00

Morning: 7:45 a.m. I hear the familiar alert signal and know that Judith HeartSong has just posted her semi-daily entry.

I read her post. I check the article she's talking about. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/11/AR2005101101781.html I notice that she has another award, so I go to check out the blogger who gave it to her. The Love Train He has a nice journal. He is suspiciously warm and fuzzy. It's a wonder when men like him are het!

I notice that he has people who blog who he likes to promote. It's so cool to find new people to read. It's special when writers bond.

What are the characteristics of a successful blog?

With Judi, it's more than her art and more than her openness. She is concise and she is kind. She doesn't talk overly long and she is not self-pitying. (I am.) She is gracious to her readers. Everything she says is true. She tells you what you need to know without going into too much detail. And the wonderful thing is that she never posts a bad entry. Everything she says is thoughtful. Even when she speaks of heartbreak, she doesn't leave you feeling bad, but rather hopeful... and rooting for her.

I've talked about the "spark of divinity" that we all have inside, as I see it. I just happen to think that Judi's is a little bit bigger than most people's.

I am trying to be a better blogger. In the past week, I think I achieved something of that when I told how I really felt deep inside about not getting to see my lover. Yeah, I was a big baby, but that's who I am.

Ultimately, this journal is for me, but readers make it more real and can validate if not your thoughts then at least your right to them. And receiving an accolade for something you wrote (which, aside from service, is the only thing I produce) makes you feel responsible and own what you say.

It just happens that I connect with Judi. We have some things in common and that seems to smooth our ability to communicate. Judi is... one of the best friends I never met. I stand in the crowd of people who admire the stuffings out of her.

It's funny. I enjoy the relative anonymity of this blog although I realize that it has potential perils. I have tried to be careful not to reveal too much information about myself although if you read enough of this journal and it's links, you can learn or deduce where I live, who I am, what I do, who my people are and that I have a cat who is on a rubber band-free diet. It's all there if you are savvy enough to figure it out.

I have been blind to bad karma and negativity between bloggers. We're just a microcosm, after all, so it isn't a surprise.

Who's your favorite blogger? Send me a link!

Good advice and other items

2005-10-11T18:54:00.000-07:00

The other day at Staff Day a city police officer advised us, along with remembering to lock our car doors, to NOT keep garage door openers and extra keys in the car. They get that garage door opener, they're in. But better yet, he advised us to white-out the address on our vehicle registration. "We only require that you have the registration," he said. "Your address is on your license." That might prevent a car bandit from stealing your car and taking it to your house while you are at work or shopping or otherwise occupied.

In other news, I had some secondhand news of my ex- today and though at first I felt weird, knowing that she seems to be doing well has lifted a big weight from my heart. I feel like that door closed that much more today. It's a mighty relief, actually.

I used to be desperate for information but now I'm more than anxious to move forward and get the last of it out of my system. I will always care very much for her and her family, but I'm looking to the future and to people who actually want me around.

When you're wanted, even the bad things are good.

Today was National Coming Out Day.

I wonder what the day meant to individuals and families and co-workers today. What happened? Did anything?

Chances are good that if all the people who aren't exactly heterosexual turned a different color for a day, we'd all be shocked and the world might just change some -- and for the better of everyone... unless ignorant fear is allowed to run things.

Final item: I've got a "Jones." Welch's dried cherries. I found them in the snack section of my store. Ooo-wheee.

I paid 60 cents more for a 5.5 oz. bag than I did for a gallon of gas and I have no regrets. Mmmmm.

Great Lakes cherries and no "dioxide" of any kind in the ingredients.

I bought another bag to share with my co-workers tomorrow... but will I?

"Muah-ha-ha" she laughed, evilly!

I'll probably be over them quickly but a lovely treat. Thank goodness Michigan and it's environs didn't have any hurricanes this year!

Everything's better for now

2005-10-10T04:27:00.000-07:00

I did talk to Em yesterday. She understood how I felt. I'm not walking away from her. I'm going to see if I can't hold out for a while.

It's different from the last time I was kept away... but I don't know if it's different enough.

I have so much more to ponder and to say on this but I have to get to work.

I only wish I knew the whole truth of the first time it happened. Even if it hurt, it would have made me a better person. I don't even get to know if that one ended up happy. I hope she found someone who adores her that she adores in turn.

I've told Em that I love her. She laughs, but she doesn't say it back.

Here's your sign, fool.

Just a little bit longer. She's too good to turn away from without some bit of a fight.

I drove all night.

2005-10-08T21:31:00.000-07:00

I've been out for hours, cruising around, running some errands. I feel empty and edgy. I am thinking about my Em. I don't know what to do. There's no comfort here.

Am I asking too much; to actually see the person I'm dating?

I adore Em. She's smart and so sassy. She loves making jokes at my expense and after all the verbal abuse I endured in my life, I don't mind a single bit. It's warm with her.

I'd love to be patient with stamina. I just don't know what I'm waiting for.

Her children are her number one concern. I get it.

She has school to accomplish. I get it.

Her ex-husband is a dingleberry who, with his second wife, is making her life very difficult. I get it.

How she keeps pressing on is a wonder. She's amazing. She blows my mind. I pray for things to be easier for her.

I'll just be over here wondering if I'll ever get squeezed in for long-term, hello-I-see-you-and-I-am-glad-you-are-here kind of thing.

It doesn't seem likely. There will always be something creating an obstacle.

I don't expect promises of a future. I see how life works. Staying together is rare. Here we are and there isn't even being together a little while. I guess I'm not enough.

She needs someone who chats a lot and is as fiery as she is. Someone who isn't as sensitive as I am. Someone content to be on the backburner.

I feel so empty today. A few days ago, she called and told me all her problems and just listening to her made me happy.

Then she told me we couldn't see each other this weekend. That's what I wait for. How pathetic am I?!

She isn't pushing me away like the one who broke my heart did. She isn't even letting me get close enough to get pushed away.

My heart is a vacuum. I want to bury my head in the sand. I want to sleep like I am dead. I want to be everything I'm not. I can't beg for attention, for affection.

Tonight I would have stopped where my mother's ashes are, but at 11 at night, the church parking lot was loaded with people. It's just as well. I know I would have broken down.

Never mind, it's happening now. I wish I was still out driving... to keep my mind focused on surviving streets full of teenagers and drinkers rather than being here, alone, empty... and feeling like sugar on the floor.

Ants, in Equality and not feelin' the love

2005-10-07T19:57:00.000-07:00

Luckily, the ants swarming inside this old mobile home tonight are the big, wing-ed kind that aren't malicious unless you mess with them. Thank goodness for the bug spray that does them in quickly and isn't harmful to my cat and doesn't give me any respiratory grief.

There has been so much rain this season. This isn't the first time the critters have tried to take over the house.

"Equality" is an grass-roots group that has done much good in other states, but in Florida, it's something of a joke. I don't know why people here don't realize that if we don't fight for our rights and the right to be responsible for each other, we'll never get anywhere and might even be set back.

In the past, I went to where the group was supposed to meet, only to find no one else. At my third try, there were some people there who looked like they might be meeting but damned if I was going up to them, in a sports bar, to ask if they were homosexual activists.

I received e-mail from someone who wants to try and start again. I'm skeptical. I don't have much energy to give as it is. I certainly don't want to drive all the way to some meeting place in another county just to get burned again.

I will write to politicians and speak to crowds and take to the streets... but with other people who are for real. I don't have the time to fool around.

I give regularly to the Human Rights Campaign. (*Note to self: Call HRC and change payment method.) When I run into someone else who gives a flying kadiddlehopper, then maybe we'll start a movement.

What I really want to talk about tonight is my heart. The woman I am supposedly involved with doesn't have time for me again this weekend.

I was hoping to see her to talk about the status of the relationship in person. It isn't fair to expect me to wait forever for her to have time for me. I changed my work schedule to accommodate her. She can't even see me. This will make it more than a month since I've seen her.

She has so much going on. I understand that. What the hell am I doing in the equation? She has NO TIME for me.

I don't feel that I can approach the subject at this time. I am the least of her concerns. She doesn't need me whining or asking for freedom to see other people or telling her I can be her friend but I can't handle nothingness.

She's hurting me and it's just not right. I wonder how long I can put up with being treated like this before I crack. She doesn't know she's making me miserable. It isn't the right time to tell her I need to be able to see her now and then or just be friends and nothing more. I don't think I've asked her for anything more than that. But it's too high a price for her.

I don't know what I'm supposed to feel like when I get treated like this. I don't want to add any other problem to her complex life right now.

I know I need to tell her that she needs to love me or let me go. I am more than willing to fit her into my life. I'm not important enough to be a real part of hers.

It's all about finding the right moment and the saying it... even if it comes out wrong. The one thing that I learned from having my heart raked over is that you have to look out for yourself.

I gave up time to myself and time I'd spend with family and friends. I save up to be with her. Gas ain't cheap but I am more than willing to make the trip, even for just a brief visit.

Nope. Not wanted. School, kids, work.

Why does she even bother with me at all?

Give me strength. I'm afraid I am going to have to say goodbye. I don't want to.

Maybe it's time to get those other 92 cats. I'm about ready to give up.

5876

another comment too big....

2005-10-06T16:41:00.000-07:00

My response to: judithheartsong/newbeginning/entries/1586

Everything. I want to say everything. I wrote all my life, encouraged by teachers. But it was when I had a muse, one person who listened to and loved what I wrote that what I wrote took on a life. Soon others followed in the footsteps of her admiration. It was never enough to write for myself; I had to be talking to someone.

When I recognized the opportunity to see my thoughts instantly published on line, I had no idea that it would become something more than just that. I do think that it is vanity and equates to nothing, but if somewhere along the way I encourage something good, then it's good.

I didn't know that people would start talking to me. NJLITTLEBEAR was the first person to communicate with me. Then I think you, through him, and then almost everyone who followed, through you.

I still write for myself. I tell things in my journal that I would never say. (Hohumlala aka "Relentlessly Blinking Cursor" will tell you it's true.) I want an outlet for these "deep secrets" because it is my belief that we ARE all the same and that the truth is not earth-shattering to the open-minded.

It is my hope that people reading my journal will see beyond the "lesbian" and recognize my humanity as a reflection of their own... and in so doing realize that denying "us" (people who are different) freedoms is not right.

It's still legal to discriminate against me in Florida and most other states because of what I am. I didn't choose to be homosexual but I did choose not to let being gay in an intolerant world destroy me. It was be true or die. It's the same with my journal.

I do censor myself to a degree. I do not intend to offend anyone. I respect different viewpoints. I believe we all have to do the best that we can at any given moment... and sometimes that best is oppressive to others. We're all just trying to cope.

It doesn't matter if what I write travels into the future or not. I'm not afraid of dying with a life that goes unrecognized. I'm afraid of not putting whatever I have to offer into living while I am alive.

I'm not all bad, though.

2005-10-06T04:56:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wish I could encourage my Reversi opponents, and let them know they still have a chance, let them in on a strategic move they could make.

It would be nice to be matched up with players in the same "league." Some players seem to have plenty of leisure time in making decisions. Some players aren't emotionally mature enough to stay and finish the game.

Hmmm, maybe I do need to shift to Intermediate. But it's not about the competition for me. It's about the recreational value.

Why I can never quit the animal hospital

2005-10-05T04:24:00.000-07:00

With a future like this, I have to feed them somehow!

Back to the reversi porch

2005-10-05T04:13:00.000-07:00

... because I'm just not running with the big dogs today.

Now and then, I get delusions that I'm ready to take on better reversi players. I bumped myself up to intermediate this morning and it wasn't pretty. I know that if I play better players I am likely to get better. But the truth is that I don't know that I can stand the ego-crushing.

And this early in the morning, the intermediate and advanced players aren't generally Americans. I was crushed by a Russian this a.m. who must be some kind of genius.

The thing about games like reversi and Chess, you have to be able to think ahead about what you'll do. several moves ahead. Aside from that, you have to know a few things about the effect of where you place your disks.

There are a few key things that I know, but I apparently do not know enough and maybe it is time that I spent some time getting whipped so I can advance.

The thing is that I like to feel victorious in the morning. It helps my day go better.

So maybe my strategy should be ego warm-ups in the morning, and be taught some hard lessons in the evening.

It might send me to sleep grumpy, but that's okay. I'll fight the good fight in the morning and hopefully feel right as rain again before I have to face people.

There's plenty of people as good or better than me playing in the beginners still. My object is fun... however, my other object is to keep my mind perking along.

I guess I owe it to my aging cells to give then something more to work on.

Have you tried Reversi (aka Othello?)

5827

another round from the reversi board

2005-10-03T18:16:00.000-07:00

The choices of what you can say to your opponent aren't too varied. There's Hello; Thank You; Nice Move; Good Luck; Good Game; Didn't see that coming; Ouch!; Oops!; :) ; :( ; It was luck; You're Welcome; Nice Comeback; It's your turn; Be right back...; Okay, I'm back; It's Your Turn; Are you still there?; Nice try; You're Welcome; Sorry, I have to go now.... You get the idea. International diplomacy.

It'd be more fun if it could be a little more interactive, a little more hip-hop, a little more sardonic.

I'd like to trade barbs. I'd like to know who I'm playing. Since January, I've written about this game. Like most any game, we learn from it. I am getting better at it yet... but my opponents remain the unknown.

Who are they? They are people in the US and other countries all over the world. Wherever Microsoft products are sold, I suppose.

Are they mostly male? I don't rightly know. Some of them are very chatty. Maybe they are attempting distraction or maybe they are just lonely. Others shut off their chat capabilities for whatever reason.

I'd like the chance to communicate, to question.

I'd ask their age and gender. I'd want to know what time it is in their country and what their doing online at that particular hour. I'd ask them how long they've been playing the game.

I'd also like to snippy and brash. I'd like to offer sass. I might even enjoy being a little crude.

Maybe something like that would change perceptions or maybe it would just fan flames.

At the very least, they could add a few more phrases to choose from.

No, let's face it... I'm a would-be Yenta. I'm too curious. I want details. I want to get into that Turk's head. I want to know what's up with the Serbian. I wanna know what the Thai is having for dinner. I want to query the Swede on what life is in a neutral country.

Bill Gates could make it happen.

Oh, Mr. Gates....

5808

(sigh)

2005-10-03T17:29:00.000-07:00

I'd love to have something to write, but I'm just empty tonight. Drained. Devoid of...

Hey... I just got an idea!

Note to self: Go into civilization soon and purchase an acid-free journal.

<(twitch)>

{Evil laughter.} Muuahhhahahaha!

Canine Influenza

2005-10-03T04:40:00.000-07:00

If you haven't been listening to the news lately and you have a canine companion, listen up. A strain of flu is going around. It somehow made it's way from horses to dogs. The virus seems to be quite contagious and also potentially deadly. They say that 10 percent of dogs that contract it die.

The virus can apparently be passed quite easily through casual dog contact or may even be passed from animal to animal by humans who carry it home.

The symptoms include coughing (the virus mimics "kennel cough"), gagging, lethargy, loss of appetite and a runny nose.

If your pet displays any of the above signs, get to the vet ASAP.

A Mother's Love

2005-09-30T18:23:00.000-07:00

I always felt love from my mother. She was my security. I have a clear memory of her in a yellow one-piece dress, with starched pleats. I remember her ironing in it. I remember her wearing it to bring cupcakes to my birthday in Nursery School at King Street Baptist Church in Cocoa.

A lot went on that I had no idea about. I was kept safe from things that happened. Until I was in my 20s, I never knew about her post-partum depression when my sister was born.

Someone was always around when she went to stay at a hospital when I was small. Her mother's death got the better of her, but I never knew what happened. My father's mother came to live with us then, when we stayed at the Holiday Inn in Hollywood. My father had transferred offices of The Miami Herald.

She came back when we moved into the house at 7240 Tropicana Street in Miramar. For a while, a "colored woman" named Ruby kept house. Ruby was ancient and chewed tobacco. She had worked for my grandfather. She took the bus from Tampa to be with us. I think grandaddy must have paid her to take care of us. She shared my room but I do not remember much more.

Over the years, my mother went back to volunteer nursing and taking refresher courses.

In 1972, on our way to get my sister from Pembroke Pines Middle School, we were hit by a gravel truck and both nearly died.

My life is a blur, pretty much. I only remember a few things and the thing I most remember is that my parents loved me. I was safe with them. They were refuge from all that frightened me in the world. They had all the answers.

Life continued. I went to high school, but in the middle of my freshman year, my father had the chance to return here, to the place that we call home.

I finished high school, grateful to be away from the cruelty of my peers among new kids who weren't quite sure what to make of the likes of me... scarred, unfashionable, naive, but the granddaughter of someone prestigious.

I started college and in my first year, my mother, who had suffered small strokes for years, had another one only days after my parents' anniversary on April 1st. They called themselves "April Fools."

This was a major stroke. I wasn't allowed to come home until school ended. I got off the plane and was taken to Holy Cross Hospital in Ft. Lauderdale to see her. My father went every night.

She came home and I spent the summer helping her with the assistance of aides who came and went. We took her to therapy. Dad's friends built a ramp and a porch onto the house.

I went back to school... uninterested in study but not allowed to leave.

My depression did not begin there but I was discovering much about myself and feeling the most acute pain in my heart that I have ever known.

I finished four years of college and came home to stay for eight more.

My mother lost the use of her right arm and right leg. Aphasiac, she managed to communicate as best she could though it was often hard to decipher what she wanted. She somehow managed to smile and to convey love and laughter through it all. Smiling at me was her last conscious act.

I have never had children and I do not know how a mother feels but I can feel the ferocity of a mother's love around me. My friends, relatives and lovers seem to be in love with their children and their grandchildren as well.

I know that I am always second or third or even farther on down the line in the scheme of things when I date a mommy.

I know single women who sleep with their sons. Sons approaching their teens. Sons approaching their 20s. Sometimes it is for lack of enough beds. Sometimes its just... something I have a hard time understanding.

I miss my mother's love. No one will ever love me more. That is how I know something about what someone who had to choose her life over being with her children feels.

I hope someday to share some intense fraction of the love I've known, and to have something of it returned in kind.

Inspired by: http://journals.aol.com/judithheartsong/newbeginning/entries/1580

5743

Me? I won? WOW!

2005-09-29T08:31:00.000-07:00

http://journals.aol.com/judithheartsong/newbeginning/entries/1577

I am so happy to have won a Heartsong Award. I had no idea that I would actually win. There were so many great entries. I particularly loved "human male." Sorry, I can't look up the author right now (I'm at work, being naughty!)

Thank you for all the congratulations. :oD This hardly seems real. I get to go out for lunch in 35 minutes. At that time, I will be able to whoop and holler like a Florida Cracker. Yippee! Yahooo! Woooooooo! (and then there's the "Rebel Yell" that cannot really be pronounced but it's sort of like iiiiiaaaiiiiiyyyieeeeiieiieiieiiyoooaaaaiiyooooiiiyyyiiieeeeiiiyaaaaaaa....)

Ecstatic ;oD

earl-i in the mornin'

2005-09-26T01:40:00.000-07:00

3:40 a.m.

The mind starts running over things early and waking its bearer up. This morning it happened about 3 a.m., a little earlier than usual.

I don't understand how it is that the mind suddenly starts churning when you are trying to sleep.

Maybe a dream makes the mind wake and start thinking, which in turn wakes everything else up.

Unfortunately, the emotions are awoken as well.

This morning I'm thinking about people who hurt me and people I may have to hurt. I'm thinking about the fear of loneliness (my own.)

I'm thinking about other people who are hurting each other.

I have been thinking a lot about prejudice and how it is actually a mask of the fear of death.

I wake and in turn wake up my computer and I see the alert of a post, http://journals.aol.com/ecori/AnimalSpirits/entries/1463 by one of the most peaceful people I have never met.

I cannot answer her question. I can speculate that they feel threatened and want to eliminate that threat.

"Make levees, not war" is a brilliant statement at this time in history. I wish that it was a thought that would suddenly change the world. Unfortunately, we have a president with a whole lot of power and very little brain. He is a member of a powerful family of oil barons and war mongers.

His agenda of trying to make up for his father's mistakes is being accomplished. Behind his close set eyes and empty-head is the character of a simpleton.

He is throwing himself into the disaster zone to make it look like he cares about his fellow Americans. He doesn't though. He has NEVER had to.

As much as they try to sell you a guy who grew up all-American, they used to bathe that little fella in oil and swaddle him in money. He did what was expected as much as he was able.

What kind of an ego do you have when you have a film made of you that shows you driving around in your car? Did you ever see this? There's a film of G.W. from way back in his early days of trying to suck power and he's in a car, driving around. It's suppose to make him look smart and powerful? He's in short sleeves, looking around as he drives. For all you know, he could be driving around a cow pasture or oil field. I don't remember seeing anything but shots of him, not the scenery... maybe there was a passing glimpse of a modest home somewhere. Trying to make him look like a regular guy, a man of the people.

He isn't. Rest assured.

Why do people fear peace? They want peace... but they are so fearful that anything that threatens the country will mean the end of their idyllic lives and all that they have... big trucks, ostentatious homes, skinny wives full of Botox, humongous egos, pleasure boats, plenty of food and the right to vote.

Anybody and anything different is a threat to the idea that they are important in the over-all scheme of life and that they thought that they will live a long, long time.

That's why people are rude to the point of endangering strangers in traffic, in public.

The problem is that we are picking on people who know nothing but war now. We are only helping to make orphans and crippled children. There's no humanitarian mission in the thought of war.

Fortunately it happens anyway. The young people who are dying in the cradle of civilization are not unmoved by the people they see.

Our armed forces do actually stop shooting sometimes and feed people or help make shelter. They do bandage the injured and try to find laughter in the middle of hell.

They are also guilty of atrocities. It happens in war and in peace as well. It's nice to think there is no rape and torture going on, no random murder... but it happens. It happens.

I didn't even set off to talk about this. I had my own aching heart in mind. But what is that? This isn't the time for vanity. This is the time for action.

My parents are going to Mississippi next month. They cancelled their vacation to take supplies to Katrina victims and to help out however they can.

I'm not really sure what good writers and historians can do.... My step-mother, an aging hippie, just had to do SOMETHING. And my father, at 75, is going along with it.

There are some people who believe that many of the people who fled Katrina are "better off now" than the were before. These are people who believe that poverty is a condition brought about by low morals.

Of course the people who think this are people born into money and people who have forgotten where they came from.

The Peace March in Washington was a wonderful thing. There has to be more, though. More organization, more of a singular voice without pushing other agendas in the process. We need to be unified on the singular point of ending the war and helping the people of Iraq move forward and not back. (The new Iraqi constitution may set things back, stripping women of the rights they do have altogether, for one thing.)

That's what will make our complaints be heard.

There is more work to do. If only we could respect each other in the process.

Noodles, poodles and clean hands

2005-09-23T03:50:00.000-07:00

My new boss is a cheerful woman. Even when she is upset. When something goes wrong, she exclaims "Poodles!"

She'll say, "While your noodling around maybe you can figure out how to assemble this."

I'm the one who takes care of things like removing lizards and snakes that get in the building, replacing the flag when it gets warn out, lubricating the bookdrop lock system, spraying the black widow spiders that like to live in the bookdrop.

I get carried away sometimes. The other day when the power went out I ran home to get flashlights. I have at least six flashlights. I am only one person but I guess I don't like wandering in the pitch dark.

In other news, I see there's a study out about women having cleaner hands than men. (That is, that we are a little more likely than men to wash our hands.) File that under DUH!

How many millions were spent on that? Who are the crafty thieves who do studies like that? Don't they know they are unnecessary? Is this a big revelation to somebody? Does it change the way we live?

<<shakes head>>

<<rolls eyes>>

<<sighs>>

Do you ever get tired of absurd stuff like this? I sure do.

Hand me the money, people, and I will remind you that we already knew this.

My question: Does the kingpin who gets these studies going wash his money before he rolls in it?

Geez.

If

2005-09-22T02:32:00.000-07:00

"If I had 'this,' I would do 'this.'"

Why limit yourself?

I used to tell V, "You gotta die, you might as well ****." It was an idea she embraced. I really miss that about her. She's full of life.

Life is short and no one gets out alive. If you want to take a class or go sky-diving or get back into something you use to enjoy, stop dawdling and stop making excuses.

If you have a gift you aren't sharing, share it.

I know that our situations can limit us. I am low on cash, energy and free time myself.

Sometimes you have to be creative.

If you have the time to sit and read this, you have the time to be doing something.

Step away from the computer... go on with your bad self! You can do it! Go on now. Git!

Come back with a smile on yer face.

I have spoken.

Even if it's not National Friends and Family Week

2005-09-21T12:27:00.000-07:00

This was forwarded to me in my e-mail. Jean

Too many people put off something that brings them joy just because they haven't thought about it, don't have it on their schedule, didn't know it was coming or are too rigid to depart from their routine.

I got to thinking one day about all those women on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night in an effort to cut back. >From then on, I've tried to be a little more flexible.

How many women out there will eat at home because their husband didn't suggest going out to dinner until after something had been thawed? Does the word "refrigeration" mean nothing to you?

How often have your kids dropped in to talk and sat in silence while you watched 'Jeopardy' on television?

I cannot count the times I called my sister and said, "How about going to lunch in a half hour?" She would gas up and stammer, "I can't. I have clothes on the line. My hair is dirty. I wish I had known yesterday, I had a late breakfast, It looks like rain." And my personal favorite: "It's Monday." She died a few years ago. We never did have lunch together.

Because Americans cram so much into their lives, we tend to schedule our headaches.. We live on a sparse diet of promises we make to ourselves when all the conditions are perfect!

We'll go back and visit the grandparents when we get Steve toilet-trained. We'll entertain when we replace the living-room carpet. We'll go on a second honeymoon when we get two more kids out of college.

Life has a way of accelerating as we get older. The days get shorter, and the list of promises to ourselves gets longer. One morning, we awaken, and all we have to show for our lives is a litany of "I'm going to," "I plan on," and "Someday, when things are settled down a bit."

When anyone calls my 'seize the moment' friend, she is open to adventure and available for trips. She keeps an open mind on new ideas. Her enthusiasm for life is contagious. You talk with her for five minutes, and you're ready to trade your bad feet for a pair of Rollerblades and skip an elevator for a bungee cord.

My lips have not touched ice cream in 10 years. I love ice cream. It's just that I might as well apply it directly to my stomach with a spatula and eliminate the digestive process. The other day, I stopped the car and bought a triple-decker. If my car had hit an iceberg on the way home, I would have died happy.

Now... go on and have a nice day. Do something you WANT to do, not something on your SHOULD DO list. If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?

Make sure you read this to the end; you will understand why I sent this to you.

Have you ever watched kids playing on a merry go round or listened to the rain lapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight or gazed at the sun into the fading night? Do you run through each day on the fly? When you ask "How are you?" Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done, do you lie in your bed with the next hundred chores running through your head? Ever told your child, "We'll do it tomorrow." And in your haste, not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch? Let a good friendship die? Just call to say "Hi"?

When you worry and hurry through your day, it is like an unopened gift....Thrown away.... Life is not a race. Take it slower. Hear the music before the song is over.

It's National Friendship and FAMILY WEEK Show your friends how much you care. Send this to everyone you consider a FRIEND. If it comes back to you, then you'll know you have a circle of friends

Put family, friends, and yourself first for a change...our life can change with a single heart beat.

furthermore

2005-09-21T06:41:00.000-07:00

This relates to the Film Recommendation posted yesterday. It seems to exemplify a portion of the theme.

The film explored, among other things, our intimidation by anything that's different from our way of thinking and therefore threatening to our existence.

It made all the sense in the world to me.

It explains hatred.

Anything that puts us farther away from death. But we all have to survive and maybe if we realized that we really are all the same, we could HELP each other survive, and maybe in so doing reach our highest self.

We try doing things that keep us from death or even challenge death. Sky-dive, perform, put other people down so that we might rise.

But death is never more than a few inches away.

The meaning of life isn't earthly. You might succeed in leaving a name behind, whether famous or infamous, but even that will fade over time.

Great monuments have been built to the fear of death. The Pyramids, for example. Even these will crumble.

Forget it. We're all going to die, one way or another, sooner or later, so we might as well try to live a life where someone will miss us when we are gone. That's as close to immortal as we can get.

"In interactions with others, instead of trying to be right, why not be kind." -- Dr. Wayne Dyer

frickin' brilliant

2005-09-21T05:16:00.000-07:00

http://bobopuppyhead.blogspot.com/

wasting time

2005-09-20T19:58:00.000-07:00

Which Website are You?

questionnaire

2005-09-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

from http://journals.aol.com/wayoutdacloset/ThoughtsPoemsScribbles/

This could be fun! Copy & paste to your journal. Adjust the x's so there is an X by all the things you have done If you don’t mind, send me a link, so I can read your list. J

The object is simple: Put an "X" next to the things you've done:

(X) smoked a cigarette
(X ) smoked a cigar
(X) made out with a member of the same sex

(x) been in love...
(x) been dumped
( x ) stolen.... as a kid, i know stupid thing to do not proud of it
( ) been fired
( x) been in a fight...... verbally
( ) snuck out of my parent's house
(x) had feelings for someone who didn't have them back
( ) been arrested No, but a deputy sheriff once pulled me over and then sped away.

( ) made out with a stranger
( ) gone on a blind date.
(x) lied to a friend

(x) had a crush on a teacher

( ) skipped school Nope, never. Too much of a nerd.
( ) slept with a co-worker
(x) seen someone die

( ) had a crush on one of your blogging friends
( ) been to Canada
(x ) been to Mexico
(x) been on a plane
( ) thrown up in a bar
(x) purposely set a part of myself on fire
(x) eaten Sushi
( ) been snowboarding
( ) met someone in person from the journals.
( ) been hxc dancing at a show
( ) been in an abusive relationship Hmmm....
(x) taken painkillers

(x) love someone or miss someone right now

(x) laid on your back and watched cloud shapes go by
(x) made a snow angel
(x) had a tea party
(x) flown a kite
(x) built a sand castle
(x) gone puddle jumping
(x) played dress up
(x) jumped into a pile of leaves
(x) gone sledding
(x) cheated while playing a game

(x) been lonely
x) fallen asleep at work/school
( ) used a fake id
(x) watched the sun set
( ) felt an earthquake
(x) touched a snake
(x) slept beneath the stars
(x) been tickled
( x ) been robbed
(x) been misunderstood
( x) pet a reindeer/goat
(x) won a contest
(x) run a red light
( ) been suspended from school
(x) been in a car accident
(x) had braces
(x) felt like an outcast
(x) eaten a whole pint of ice cream in one night
(x) had deja vu
(x) danced in the moonlight
(x) hated the way you look
(x) witnessed a crime
( ) pole danced
(x) questioned your heart
( ) been obsessed with post-it notes
(x) squished barefoot through the mud
(x) been lost
( ) been to the opposite side of the country
(x) swam in the ocean
( x) felt like dying
(x) cried yourself to sleep
(x) played cops and robbers
(x) recently colored with crayons/colored pencils/markers

( ) sung karaoke (no, but I've done back-up dancing)
(x) paid for something with only coins
(x) done something you told yourself you wouldn't
(x ) made prank phone calls

(x) laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose
(x) caught a snowflake on your tongue
(x) danced in the rain
(x) written a letter to Santa Claus
(x) been kissed under a mistletoe
(x ) watched the sun set with someone you care about
(x) blown bubbles
(x) made a bonfire....
( ) crashed a party
(x) gone roller-skating
(x) had a wish come true
( ) humped a monkey
( ) worn pearls
( ) jumped off a bridge

( ) screamed penis in class.
(x) ate dog/cat food
( ) told a complete stranger you loved them
(x) kissed a mirror
(x) sang in the shower
( ) have a little black dress
(x ) had a dream that you married someone
( ) glued your hand to something
( ) got your tongue stuck to a flag pole
( ) kissed a fish
(x ) worn the opposite sexes clothes (for a play)

( ) been a cheerleader
(x) sat on a roof top
(x) screamed at the top of your lungs
( ) done a one-handed cartwheel
(x) talked on the phonefor more than 6 hours
(x) stayed up all night ( ) didn't take a shower for a week ( x) pick and ate an apple right off the tree
(x) climbed a tree
( ) had a tree house
( ) are too scared to watch scary movies alone
( ) believe in ghosts
( ) have more then 30 pairs of shoes
( ) worn a really ugly outfit to school just to see what others say
(x ) gone streaking
( ) played ding-dong-ditch What the heck is that? Ringing a doorbell and running away?

(x ) played chicken
(x) been pushed into a pool with all your clothes on
(x ) been told you're hot by a complete stranger

(x) broken a bone
(x) been easily amused
(x) caught a fish then ate it
( ) made porn
(x) caught a butterfly
(x) laughed so hard you cried
(x) cried so hard you laughed
(x) mooned/flashed someone ( ) had someone moon/flash you
(x) cheated on a test
( ) have a Britney Spears CD
(x) forgotten someone's name
(x) slept naked
( ) French braided someone's hair
(x) gone skinny dippin in a pool
( ) been kicked out of your house
(x) ridden a horse bareback
( ) eaten a lobster you caught yourself ( I did eat one my step-brother caught. Florida "bug"... surprisingly good)
( ) killed another human being

Here's some things I've done that are not on the list:

(x) rode an elephant

(x) climbed a mountain

(X) made love outdoors, in an office, in a car (not mine), on the beach... and passed up the opportunity to have sex with more than one person simultaneously, twice.

(X) dressed in drag

(x) evacuated people from a building during a fire

(x) survived a major hurricane

(x) white-water rafted, kayaked, canoed

(x) showered in a rain storm

(X) wrote about 100 bad poems, read a few of them in public, had a couple chosen for a college literary magazine

(X) euthanized an animal the hard way

(x) flew through a car windshield

(X) sensed an other-worldly presence in the room of a dying person

(x) Promised to never smoke dope (again) and am keeping the promise

(x) attended a Feminist Equinox Full Moon Ritual... (a campground full of lesbians)

(x) marched for a cause

(x) took a non-violent action training course

(X) flipped head over heels while walking without meaning to... also did it once when I stopped my bicycle too quickly. I landed on my bum with one arm still holding the bicycle upright. And somebody saw me do it both times!

(x) can probably think of more cool, whacky and way-out things I've done

Film Recommendation

2005-09-20T13:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.flightfromdeath.com/

Go to the ant, consider her ways and be wise.

2005-09-20T12:46:00.000-07:00

That's a Bible quote, one that always stuck with me.

I was just viewing the death tolls from Hurricane Katrina and the thought came back to me.

What happens when an ant mound is destroyed? Not damaged, but devastated: They rebuild... somewhere else.

That's all I have to say about that.

5484

Wonder how my g/fs doing in Broward....

2005-09-20T10:52:00.000-07:00

I was just getting ready to get in my car and go run an errand. I took a shower and dressed. I even moussed. Suddenly it became perilously rainy. It's been windy all day.

The good thing: (though superficial) My grass is getting watered and will come back to life.

The bad thing: We've had enough for a while, don't you think?

Rrrrraaaooowwww?

2005-09-20T09:47:00.000-07:00

What happens to the famous seven-toed cats of Key West when a hurricane sweeps through?

As if...

2005-09-20T08:17:00.000-07:00

They are in the process of hiring a replacement for the person who left my friend's job at the library. They are going through lengthy interview processes for three days, but they already know who they will choose. It's a shame that they are required to waste everyine else's time and money.

How do I know? Today there is a vacancy at the main library. One of three people will get the job. It is likely to be the young girl who just graduated from Boston University this spring.

The favorite is a young man from another branch, but I do not see his job up for grabs yet. I have heard the branch manager speak well of him almost every day. I know that if she could choose, he would be the one.

I'd be pretty happy about that myself as I know him to be kind, self-possessed and with a good sense of humor. Still who ends up with the job is anyone's guess.

Essay, continued

2005-09-19T18:53:00.000-07:00

Who has no natural predators? The elephant.

These gentle, loyal, family-oriented, strong, wise and useful animals are my kind of "people." They have been a helpmate to man since recorded history makes mention of them. They took Hannibal over the Alps. They aided Alexander’s attempt to conquer the known world. They moved the stuff of civilizations. They were some of the very first "tour buses." However elephants did not need to prove useful to man to prove useful to the world.

(I choose not to address poaching and habitat loss. It is too heart-breaking.)

It’s true that elephants may trample brush underfoot and eat tons of their environment, but it is also true that they blaze trails for other wild animals and man to follow and bring plant life to new locations in their dung. There are, in fact, seeds that will not germinate unless they have passed through an elephant! Elephants pushing trees to the ground open a forest canopy for life-giving light to make it’s way to seedlings on the forest floor. Elephants dig down to the water level in dry riverbed locations, bringing life-giving water to other animals and plant life. It is said that knowledge of waterholes is ancestral lore, passed to each new generation.

They say that elephants never forget. This is probably due to the size of their craniums. The temporal lobe (the seat of memory) of the elephant is somewhat bigger and more convoluted than that of man. It would be wonderful if I could remember everything I want to recall. I am grateful however, sometimes, for the things that I have been able to forget.

Elephants remember each other for generations. Elephants that know each other or perhaps grew up together greet each other in an elaborate ceremony when they see each other again. It’s not anything like putting on a big dinner when your old uncle comes to town.

Humans ultimately die alone, but elephants attend each other beyond their passing. Observers tell of rituals of tender care and sympathy before, during and after death. Elephants will visit the bones of their dead, gently feeling the remains in remembrance. It’s hard to watch this and not feel vicarious grief.

And when members of an elephant family become separated the animals become anxious and call out to each other. I guess that makes the elephants better than me where it comes to keeping up with the relations. Their complex bonds are essential to survival and remembering who you can trust is a survival tool for any living being.

Every family herd of elephants is led by a venerable female, a matriarch, who keeps her family together. She knows whether to circle the wagons or to light out for the territories when threatened.

Elephants frolic when it’s safe, abandoning decorum to splash each other at the waterhole. These are my kind of people. I generally like to stay warm and dry but if you wanna splash around, don’t expect any mercy once I change into my playclothes.

Elephants live in herds without bulls on a day-to-day basis, but when one of the girls is in heat, bull are tolerated on the outskirts of the herd as they compete for her favor.

Once male elephants reach maturity, they are more or less on their own. They may opt to form a loose pack with other bulls, but there just isn’t the same organization going on. They spar for dominance among their peers and older bulls guide, teach and protect the up-and-comers. It is said that elephants not only remember each other but also each other’s social standing when they meet, so they need not vie for position again and again. But they will fight for hours, maybe even a day or two, and sometimes to death. (Men!)

African bulls come into "musth" in their 20s. That’s about 16 to a human boy, I would guess. This is the time when they want to bandy about and strut their stuff. They start stinking up the place with smelly urine to leave their mark. I’ve cleaned some young men’s rooms in my day and some bathrooms as well, and I can tell you… but I won’t....

The bull checks the females for readiness to mate through special organs in his mouth. He puts his trunk on her and breathes her in. If she is receptive, she invites him to follow her. She makes the choice. The male will stay with her until "esterus" ends, trying to protect her from other bulls. She may choose subsequent mates, thereby insuring that the big kahuna elephant, the strongest stud, is her baby’s daddy. Then she goes back into the company of the women who will help her raise her child. The poor gal gestates that sucker for 22 months. And you thought nine was a pisser! Almost two years! Dang!!! That might just be a major reason why males aren’t tolerated nor do they mate for life. Think about it....

Now, frankly, I personally don’t care for all this mating foolishness. I’m just not that kind of elephant. I’m happy in my crowd of girls with anoccasional visit from the dudes for their sake, but that’s just me. This is MY essay, after all.

Did I mention that the female elephant is ready to mate for only two days in four years? Ahhh. Imagine the freedom.

Maybe one of the best things about the elephant from a human perspective is that wrinkles are not only beautiful to another elephant but essential in helping them stay cool. Water and mud linger in the wrinkles and help them stay cool as the water evaporates. Elephants can tolerate temperature extremes but even elephants have to keep from getting too hot. Their ears act as radiators, cooling the blood which flows back into their bodies. The deeper and more plentiful the wrinkles, they cooler you are. Take that, Oil of Olay!

And what life wasn't enriched by playing in dirt and mud? Imagine if it was socially acceptable for all ages!

Think of all the time and money you’d save if you were allowed to embrace your wrinkles like an aging male movie star. Hmph.

Elephants eat 3/4ths of their lives, devouring about 50 tons a year each. They turn forests into grasslands and waterholes into swamps. They change their world almost as much as we do. (I didn’t say everything about them was good.) I don’t eat as often as an elephant. I usually only eat twice a day, but I probably spend a lot of time thinking about food.

Elephant teeth continually generate until they reach their 60s. They chew and wear down their teeth but more teeth push forward to replace the worn teeth. Finally, when the last teeth wear down, the elephant can no longer eat as much and death is not far off.

Now elephants are an untapped resource. One elephant "pooties" enough methane by-product from it’s digestion processes in a day to fuel 20 miles of car travel! All the more reason to keep them around. Alternative energy on both ends!

Now let’s get to the really good part of the elephant: the trunk. Strong and sensitive, this is a fascinating device. Able to lift 450 pounds without fuss, able to drag much more weight, it reaches plants that other animals cannot with it’s telescoping action (that includes giraffes!) With it, an elephant is able to siphon 56 gallons of water in 4&1/2 minutes. It possesses a keener sense of smell than a dog and is as dexterous as a human hand. And elephant can pick lint from it’s eye or a single seed from the ground.

The trunk is a siphon, a hose and a bucket. Elephants pull water into their schnozzles and lift it to their mouths and let the water into their throats. Taking in water through the sinuses must be 1,000 times more uncomfortable to them than it is to us. Eesh!

The trunk is more useful than a Swiss Army knife. It has no bones, but rather is controlled by some 100,000 muscles which allow it to bend in any direction. It takes a long time to perfect trunk control though. Imagine stepping on your own nose! I guess it helps keep the baby elephants busy.

Elephants can reach higher than giraffes into the trees, shake fruit to the ground, dig roots and tubers with their tusks and gather grasses in the depths of the swamp. Even when food is scarce, they have a means of surviving. With their amazing trunks they can dig to where water is only seeping and will patiently wait for their trunks to fill before drinking.

Like humans, elephants mature sexually in their teens. However while females can mother effectively, with support, from their teens, males of the genus aren’t likely to achieve fatherhood until they reach their 30s. And even then, they aren’t sticking around. Who needs ‘em? They’re smelly, anyway. But at least they were thoughtful enough to time their amorous attentions to a birth time when there is abundant food.

Raising a child is better when you do not do it alone. A calf finding itself in some dangerous or chaotic situation only need to cry out to have a herd attend it and bring it to safety. There was a time in human history when families stayed close together and the entire family provided your lessons on life.

So here were are: Elephants essentially have no one bothering them, live in interdependent, matriarchical and very caring family groups and provide many services to their habitat and the creatures that share it. They eat, sleep, exercise and frolic all in a day. They regulate their own temperature and do not sweat. The females support each other and don't desert their loved ones unless the survival of the herd depends upon it. They don't have jobs, don't need cars, eat whatever they can find and owe nothing to VISA. What could be better?

Maybe one of the best things about elephants is that being huge is not only desirous but a sign of good health. A skinny elephant is a very bad thing.

Have another piece of pie, honey.

Jambo! http://journals.aol.com/judithheartsong/newbeginning/entries/1556

Heffalumps

2005-09-19T18:52:00.000-07:00

Why not join in the fun of another Heartsong contest?

http://journals.aol.com/judithheartsong/newbeginning/entries/1556

Not that any animal's life is easy....

I have always thought that the dog was a noble creature, and one of the most virtuous. Dogs are faithful, loving, forgiving, smart, comforting, heroic. They ask little but time, affection, food and exercise. And when a dog "misbehaves" you can't really blame it. It's just acting on instinct and what it has learned from it’s humans.

Sometimes we lead animals to bad habits without realizing it. It's not really their fault if they pee on the floor after you've used ammonia to clean the floor. They are doing what comes naturally. They aren't really much different from children in that respect. If you feed an animal at the table, you are teaching it to beg.

I have often thought it would be great if someone held me in as high a regard as I felt for my dog.

And dogs lives aren't all that bad. They love to be outside and to run and play. They don't have to work much and they get to sleep a lot. The food they get isn't the greatest or most savory but they usually seem happy to get it.

There's just something comforting about the tick-tick-tick of dogs paws across a wooden floor. It has been said that the simple act of stroking a dog's fur is calming, and that living with pets adds years to your life.

One of the best aspects of "owning" a dog is that he or she is a natural Good Will Ambassador to your neighborhood. When you own a dog, you know your neighbors. They see you out walking and, attracted by your handsome furred companion, strike up conversation. If you were moseying through the neighborhood without a pet, they'd probably report you as suspicious. And dogs help us get exercise we might not otherwise get. I have known a woman who walked her cat on a leash but it's just not the same somehow.

I have always loved dogs. A shaggy white dog with tawny brown spots is one of the first things I was ever conscious of, one of my first memories. Her name was Gypsy. My parents adopted her from the animal shelter before my older sister was born.

I came late into affection for cats. My mother didn't want us to have cats because as a girl her cat would go out at night and fight and come back bloodied. My first cat experience came in college when I spent time in a friend's lakeside cabin with her kitten. I played with that cat all day. It was attention it needed. She and her roommate were both at school or work most of the day. When she came back to school the next day she was amazed at how much calmer the kitten was. It was the first inkling of my appreciation for things feline.

It wasn't until I was in my 20s that a cat finally came to live with us. I was home from college, staying to care for my mother. This raggedy little cat was in the backyard tossing a field mouse in the air. I don't how it happened but she made her way indoors and we were giving her food. I guess she checked us out and decided she would allow us her companionship. I guess she forgave us for having a dog.

When I suggested the shelter, Dad said "No, they’ll just put her to sleep." That was unexpected. I don't know why he did it. Maybe his heart is just too big.

"Katie" was a pretty calico cat, but she had ticks and worms and patches where she was missing some fur. We took her to the vet. I had plucked her ticks. The vet took care of the worms. Her hair grew back. And then I noticed that there were lumps in her belly. I didn't know what was up. The diagnosis was kittens, and when they arrived in a box under Dad's bed, he was thrilled.

He woke me up early in the morning. "Come here!", he said. "Look!" He was so proud that four squirmy kittens had come into the world under his bed. He felt so very honored.

That was 20 years ago. I haven't been cat-less since.

There are other animals it might be wonderful to be. I have wanted to experience the freedom and fun of bird flight since I heard Judy Garland sing "Over the Rainbow." It was the subject of the first poem I ever wrote. Still, there’s a lot of work to being a bird. And you have to obey the signals to fly with the seasons and you have to spend a lot of time looking for juicy bugs to eat and water to drink.

For all the delight of the freedom of flight, the idea of having to dive-bomb for your lunch, cats, windows, 18-wheelers, jet engines, other predatory birds and boys with bb guns just turns me off. The idea of going somewhere as the crow flies, though delightful, especially now with the price of gas rising, is outweighed by the hard work and various difficulties of avian life.

Every animal has something about them to be admired. Snakes can climb trees and swim. Otters are such cunning cuties. Anhingas are excellent fishermen. Ants are so industrious that the Bible mentions them. Even the mosquito and the flea, though two of the most annoying and treacherous beasties ever devised, are the source of millions of dollars in human revenue every year. Veterinarians owe their children’s college educations to the tiny flea. And wouldn’t you like to sell mosquito repellent in the swampy South or during black fly season in Maine?

It is clear that I would not want to be an animal on display in a circus or a zoo. It is true that for the most part these animals are treated as well as their "owners" are capable of. Still, there is no place like home and no food like what you get at home. The "people" who are your "people" are what home really is. There’s nothing like knowing the terrain and what’s on it, nothing like drinking the water and eating the food you are accustomed to, and smelling the air that’s filled with the smells that you know. Your heart is in the land of your birth and you are a part of it. Your soul homes in on the signal from the place where you belong.

I would want to be an animal with a strong sense of family. Dogs are pack animals and few things are more important to a dog than other dogs. Cats can take or leave other animals. I know that there are animals that mate for life. That is an appealing scenario to me. I know that the Sandhill Cranes that visit my yard are devoted to each other and to their annual chick.

I want to be constantly surrounded with helpful and affectionate others. I want a family with a sense of fun and also of protection. I want to be such a creature that few other animals seek to do me harm. I want to travel and yet always feel at home. I don’t want to have to work that hard to find food.

I have enough trouble trying to do all the things that I should and all of the things I would like to. I need all the help I can get from my family and friends.

All animals have some sort of predator, man being the worst of these. Man is the animal than can opt to forget the ethics of wasting not. Man is the animal that knows greed beyond hunger, beyond need. Even the ants will devour the every edible part of corpse they use to nourish their colony. Even the bones of an animal become something for rodents to nibble for calcium. They won’t take only one part and let the rest rot. Predatory animals make no profit other than survival from their kill, and other animals benefit from the available leftovers. It is man that kills an entire animal for just one of it’s parts.

See the next entry for the rest of the story....

from The Stuart News

2005-09-19T09:26:00.000-07:00

Geoff Oldfather: 'Open minds' church stops short of slogan

By Geoff Oldfather
Martin County columnist
September 18, 2005

Don't you just love slogans?

Like this one: "Open Minds. Open Hearts. Open Doors."

Advertisement
localnewsadtag(); It makes you feel you've found a refuge where no matter what your past sins, what your lifestyle might be, you're welcome to walk in those open doors and be embraced by open-minded people with good hearts.

It's the slogan of the First United Methodist Church of Hobe Sound.

But there's a question these days whether the slogan is right for the church.

The church has shut the doors to its day-care center, the First Learning Center, forcing the families of 37 children to scramble for someplace else to put them.

The church announced it was closing the center for financial reasons — a few days after the pastor and board members requested the resignation of a lesbian teacher at the center.

So much for open doors and open minds.

Vivian Throgmorton, the teacher, said she hasn't made any secret of the fact she's gay.

"If people ask me, I'm not going to lie about my life," Throgmorton said.

Throgmorton has been a teacher at the First Learning Center for about four years. Her past two annual reviews praised her work and initiative.

Last year she received "exceptional" ratings in all 26 areas listed on the evaluation form. Her review states in part that Throgmorton "has built a wonderful relationship with the children."

But on Aug. 29, Throgmorton was asked to resign.

The request came one day after Shari Carothers, the wife of a church board member, wrote a letter of complaint to church leaders about Throgmorton's relationship with another center employee, saying they have "professed to be homosexual."

"Alternative lifestyles should not be a position we expose our young children to in a Christian day care," Carothers wrote. "As a parent that sends my children to a religious school, I have entrusted that they have hired and are teaching my children in a Christian manner."

Asked last week about her complaint, Carothers said it was "a private letter to the board."

She said she wrote the letter so the day-care center would be "checked on in a closer manner by the church to see that it was run the way we wanted it run as far as the children's spirituality, which wasn't being followed."

On Aug. 29, the Rev. Jim Trainer forwarded the complaint to center director Patricia Piche, along with a memo in which he raised questions about whether Throgmorton's relationship was affecting other workers and parents at the center.

Trainer said one student had withdrawn and a teacher had resigned because "they were unable to reconcile ... the employment of persons in such a relationship in a Christian-based pre-school."

Trainer asked Piche whether any center employees held beliefs "other than Christianity," and continued, "What measures have you taken to ensure that the relationship ... does not interfere with the quality of education."

Trainer also asked about "alleged accounts of inappropriate display of affection at the workplace ... namely the stroking of hair."

Trainer last week declined to discuss the day-care situation or his memo.

Piche responded in writing to the memo that the teacher who resigned disapproved of the Throgmorton relationship, and that "I have never seen any inappropriate display of affection."

On the education quality issue, Piche wrote, "We convey our faith by teaching the children about love, compassion and forgiveness by modeling it."

Later on Aug. 29, Throgmorton said that "without any warning" she was called to a meeting with Trainer and Piche and asked to resign. The written reason was that she was "lacking in interpersonal skills with other team members."

Throgmorton refused to resign.

Later that week, parents were notified in writing that the First Learning Center was closing because "the school faces an increasing financial deficit."

Piche, in an interview, said church officials never said anything about closing the center until the subject of Throgmorton's sexual orientation came up.

"Before? No. Nobody said we're going to shut down," Piche said.

She said the center received state pre-k funding of $2,400 each for 10 students, and other subsidies.

"There were some financial issues with some parents who do not pay on time, and because I want to have a quality center I was perhaps overstaffed; the ratio was too good, I think," Piche said. "But if we didn't have the other issue, it would have been worked out."

Some parents call the center's closing "a smokescreen."

"Patricia told us she was told by the board she was not allowed to discuss with the parents the real reason of why they're closing the school, which is because Miss Vivian is gay," said Abby Livigne-Baker.

"The school itself is the best I've ever had my kids at. I'm very happy with it. It's the kids who are going to suffer, really," Livigne-Baker said.

Crystal Spurgeon has two children who have been at the center.

She said she'd known Throgmorton about six years and found out last year she was gay.

"Did it bother me? Not at all," Spurgeon said. "It didn't bother to me to think she had been in a relationship with a woman while she was teaching my daughter; it wouldn't have made any difference. She's an excellent teacher."

No doubt there are many good people in the congregation who have strong opinions both for and against keeping Throgmorton as a teacher.

Still, remember the church's slogan: "Open Minds. Open Hearts. Open Doors."

Right.

Martin County columnist Geoff Oldfather can be reached at (772) 221-4217, or at geoff.oldfather@scripps.com

Happy Birthday, RBC!

2005-09-18T06:43:00.000-07:00

Today is the birthday of a very good friend, known to some of you as "Relentlessly Blinking Cursor." She is a very keen student of life who does not write her observations nearly often enough to suit me.

I first met Cristy in 1997 when I came to work at the animal hospital. It was the first time that I noticed her, but she remembered me from the time that I volunteered at a local elementary school in Special Education classrooms.

I was being taken around the hospital and introduced. The sight of Cristy made my heart bounce. I heard my inner-self praying, "Oh lord, tell me she's gay!" She was gorgeous. I noticed her dark dancing eyes and her wild dark hair. She spoke to me like she knew me, with a pinch of salt that I have come to know as her cynical wit.

I was kind of awestruck and didn't know what to say, but I knew that I liked her. It made me happy to get fussed at by her when I helped her out. I had no idea that it would turn into a friendship and beyond that, my moral support system.

Things rolled right along until the fateful night that I met her and her husband and mother in a gay bar. They were there to celebrate an event. I had a straight friend along. I sheepishly asked if I could let my "straight friend" join them.

Cristy must have already known I was gay. I guess you had to be there, but it was confirmation. It wasn't until a good while later that I finally began talking to Cristy about my life. In fact, I remember that we were in her car, running a food errand for the hospital when I first said something about being gay.

I don't know what I did to get so lucky. Cristy does not take people in easily. She seems to know who will be loyal. She is a kind, considerate hostess. She shares easily and gives freely. She even manages to be considerate of people that she does not care for. I think that is what makes a person big.

Cristy encourages me to keep rolling along with my life.

She came an unpacked me when I moved to the place I live now.

She keeps threatening to sneak into my house while I am away and clean it. I am almost tempted to leave a key for her because I am too sentimental. That should read "ought to be sent to a mental...." Pack-rat-itis is an unhealthy thing.

She helped me cover my arse when I found it necessary to break up with someone earlier this year, giving me the words I didn't know how to say.

Every weekend is time to be with her and her family and friends. Friday night and Sunday night, unless something extraordinary happens.

Cristy is a "brassy broad with a heart of gold." I love that type of woman!

You'd never guess that she and her family are from Nebraska. She is as worldly as any hussy from a big city.

She is sooo sassy. She gives the death glare to her husband when he walk by and shoots us the high sign of international love and brotherhood if we tease or displease her.

Today she will be all of 34. Isn't that cute? Hmmm, in many ways she is older than me. She certainly is wiser in the ways of the world.

I know she has times of blueness, but her life is good. Nice home, decent husband, gorgeous and talented daughter, best dog in the world, job where she has power and influence, her mom is close by and her mother-in-law adores her, and fabulous friends.... Life is good.

I hope to be like her when I grow up.

Until then, we must continue to worship her for the goddess she is.

(**Note** Yesterday was my step-mother's birthday, today is Cristy and my library boss' birthday, tomorrow is the birthday of the veterinarian and my step-brother. Coincidence that I have these "Cancers" in my life? I think not. I joked with a co-worker on Friday that I need to interview my potential employers and ask when their birthday is. I have tried not to give credence to astrology but there are times when it just seems to ironic to not pay attention to.)

5405

Judi Heartsong, I hope you don't mind...

2005-09-18T05:28:00.000-07:00

...I wouldn't be the first to write about you.

I'm wiping my eyes because of an octopus. AGAIN. (If you cried or got misty the first time, don't read it twice.)

Geez, JH.

At least I can do that much.

When she talks about her family, there's nothing you can do.

Here is this stranger and friend, creating beauty in the world and moving us with her life.

I write to her sometimes. Sometimes we IM.

I rarely comment though I read every entry in her journal and in Virginia's journal, too, as they pop up, the instant they publsh, in my alerts.

There is a lot of good stuff out there in journal-land. Judi, though, is not like anyone else.

I don't even bother to compare myself. We have only this in common: we are lesbians. You might as well compare apples to porcupines.

A few days ago I was out in the hot sun, rolling a cart to the outdoor bookdrop at the library when I got a sudden chill of delight: "Judi Heartsong calls me "friend."

It made me wish she lived closer. We are about to get a mural in the children's section. It is inspired by a large collection of stuffed animals that has been the gift, primarily of a single patron, who still brings critters we don't have yet.

We have a pelican, a zebra, a red panda and dolphins and turtles and bears and penguins and kangaroos. We have turtles, a lemur, an ape, an armadillo, a possum.... The collection sits on the tops of the shelves and children make a beeline across the library to play with their favorite one.

We are the envy of the other five libraries in the county system. We often loan out our animals for storytimes.

My hope is that the artist who has been chosen to do the work can do the room justice. It can't be easy as the animals represent all environments, from desert to jungle and undersea as well.

I wish, though, that the work was going to be that of my favorite artist, someone who can provide something of the real and something of a dream.

http://hometown.aol.com/__121b_qIJX4ZNfP8ffrgp/H8u/4Je2lO0Rbb1A0ZAYOYMuwoSK7evYKIzXZw==

http://hometown.aol.com/judithheartsong/myhomepage/

http://hometown.aol.com/__121b_qIJX4ZNfP8ffrgp/H8u/4ML3ioN0hrUIVIaLXtUB7h4=

compliments, ghosts and bratty kids

2005-09-18T04:45:00.000-07:00

Last night, one of those animated greetings arrived on my screen with a note of encouragement about discrimination. I sent a note of thanks via IM. It was a total stanger who apologized for having read my journal. I reassured her that it was okay as the journal is public.

That was nice, really nice.

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Yesterday I offered my services at the first official meeting of the Democratic Women's Club ub this county. My step-mother is the president (as of yesterday.) My job was to mind the table that was laid out with her cousin's books and information from the Supervisor of Elections office.

An old friend, who is a former county commissioner, came over an told me to come take one of her canoes out anytime I want to. She is from a well-known Florida family out of Miami. I first met her when my parents moved back home here when I was 13.

My father took us, individually, to work with him throughout our childhoods. We visited courtrooms, jails, county commission offices, judges chambers, lawyer offices, police stations, city halls. He introduced us to everyone, even the sandwich vendor and the man who sold him Cuban shirts when he worked in Miami.

Maggy, the sister of a famous Miami attorney, took a shine to me when I was in high school and volunteered to work on her campaign. I was chosen to represent her in mock elections in the classroom. I was the only representative that lost the election. All the other Maggy's in their class period won. But I was a nerd running against a cheerleader who bought her votes with Snickers bars.

Ever since then, when we see each other, she says the nicest things to me.

I didn't start this item to write about her. Yesterday I was alos greeted by a woman that I have not seen in 27 years. She came over and introduced herself and reminded me that we boarded horses together.

When I was a senior in high school, my father bought me a horse. He wanted me to be happy but I was immature and had an idealized daydream as most young girls do. It would have been wiser to find a riding stable that allowed me to get over the daydream. But what did we know back then?

I got upset once when I found the food uncovered, and being scared, left a note I am ashamed of about the necessity of keeping the horses healthy. The ladies called my house and expressed how the note had upset them. It was one of the worst moments of my young life. I meant no harm, and I did not mean to upset people.

When this lady introduced herself, I felt instant shame. Maybe she has forgiven and forgotten, but I haven't. When I make people upset, my pain is very acute. It is a deep and riveting kind of dread that sinks to my bones and makes me want to explode to empty it from my marrow.

I said something to her, I told her where the hourse is now, and she said she just wanted to stell me who she was and she just sort of slipped back out of the room and into the crowd without really turning her back. Although I may have been looking down or away....

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I know that I certainly had bratty moments when I was a child, but for the most part I was quiet and good. As a middle-aged woman, I look at mothers who allow their kids to run and scream and throw fits in the library (and elsewhere) and I just shake my head.

My mother had a way of calming me. I think that if it was something I wanted she would explain to me why if her answer was "No." She was gentle but I do not remember what she did when we were upset and whiny. I don't remember crying, except once. I wanted a blackboard in the days of S&H Green Stamps. When we went to the store to redeem the stamps, the store was closed and I bawled my eyes out. It was a simple matter of going back when the store was open, but tell that to a 4-year-old.

I remember her telling the cashier about how much I cried.

But I digress...

I may have been bratty at times, but my parents didn't let it get out of hand. They spoke to me, they calmed me down, they let me know it would be okay.

These days, small children run around the library stacks, scream at the top of their lungs, let the whole place know that they are not getting something they want, whether its the library or Wal-Mart. Older kids put their parents down for not producing everything they desire, verbally abuse their parents, threaten them. I've seen it.

My step-mother is a victim of this, as is my girlfriend.

A child was behaving terribly in the library a few days ago and I spoke to Carol, the "Homework Helper," a former Montessori teacher and mother of two. She concurred that parents now offer quantity over quality and there is no substitute for the quality time they need to give.

But I see children learning VERY EARLY how to manipulate their parents and never stopping. I see tiny kids who smile wickedly, knowing they will get what they want. They turn into teenagers that are exceedingly rude and abusive to their parents. Why? Because they were given everything their hearts desired.

The sad thing is, these people are raising a country: People growing up to be selfish, thoughtless and immoral and even abusive cry-baby brats.

And when I reach old age, they will be in power. God help us.

confirmation

2005-09-17T04:30:00.000-07:00

My boss confirmed the fact that the woman in charge of hiring at the library does not like me. I said, "She is absolutely prejudiced against me." She responded, "Yes, and ****,too, though I don't understand why...."

Oops! I wanted to tell her that she just admitted that even she knows it to be true. I doubt that she realized what she said. If only someone else had heard it.

So that broke the last thread holding me back from saying anything to the administration. I wrote to the Human Resources administrator, asking if denying an interview was legal. I kept it simple. I did not mention names. We'll see if anything at all comes of it.

However, like I said, it is still legal to discriminate against homosexuals in Florida. I do not know if the woman in question knows that I'm gay. She might be prejudiced for any other reason... the way I dress, the way I spoke to her, my height, the scars on my face, the color of my teeth... who the heck knows?

Only that woman. And she is a powerful woman.

2005-09-15T19:47:00.000-07:00

How You Are In Love You take a while to fall in love with someone. Trust takes time.

You give and take equally in relationships.

You need your space and privacy. You don't like to be smothered.

You love your partner unconditionally and don't try to make them change.

You stay in love for a long time, even if you aren't loved back. When you fall, you fall hard. How Are You In Love?

2005-09-15T19:42:00.000-07:00

Your Career Type: Social You are helpful, friendly, and trustworthy.
Your talents lie in teaching, nursing, giving information, and solving social problems.

You would make an excellent:

Counselor - Dental Hygienist - Librarian
Nurse - Parole Officer - Personal Trainer
Physical Therapist - Social Worker - Teacher

The worst career options for your are realistic careers, like truck driver or farmer. What's Your Ideal Career?

2005-09-15T19:40:00.000-07:00

A- Hardly anything gets by you...
You have a great memory and eagle eyes How Observant Are You?

2005-09-15T19:32:00.000-07:00

Your Brain's Pattern You have a dreamy mind, full of fancy and fantasy.
You have the ability to stay forever entertained with your thoughts.
People may say you're hard to read, but that's because you're so internally focused.
But when you do share what you're thinking, people are impressed with your imagination. What Pattern Is Your Brain?

2005-09-15T19:27:00.000-07:00

Your Personality Profile You are dependable, popular, and observant.
Deep and thoughtful, you are prone to moodiness.
In fact, your emotions tend to influence everything you do.

You are unique, creative, and expressive.
You don't mind waving your freak flag every once and a while.
And lucky for you, most people find your weird ways charming! The World's Shortest Personality Test

2005-09-15T19:25:00.000-07:00

You Are 27 Years Old Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe.

13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world.

20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences.

30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more!

40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax. What Age Do You Act?

"Comin' through the dirge"

2005-09-15T18:27:00.000-07:00

The second line: After he's through wrecking the country, will there be any schools were school children will learn (the truth) about him? Will there be any books? Will there be any children?

The Gay Card

2005-09-12T04:27:00.000-07:00

I had a vision today. I had calling cards in two separate cases in my pockets. One case had a plus sign on the cover, the other had a minus sign. I handed out the card in the minus or negative case to people who are or might be intolerant, or whose having the other card might endanger me somehow.

What is on the cards? Well, both cards have my name but the positive card has more information, incluing a link to this journal. The negative cards are all business and sparse with info. The e-mail address is not Virage65@aol.com but some other e-mail account for people who are not family and friends or gay-friendly.

This idea probably came from the idea that it is not illegal to discriminate against people for being homosexual in the state of Florida. This is one of the things that I think about when I think about the way the library has treated me.

It could very well be that the woman refused me an interview knows that I'm gay. Not that it matters. Whatever I'm doing to prevent the woman from adoring me, it's done. Her view of me is set.

I have no doubt that there was some underlying reason to not help me move up.

My decision is to seek counsel with Human Resources, saying only that I was denied an interview.

And maybe I need to ask about the fact that I work 40 hours every week and have for four years and yet don't have benefits.

As for the calling cards... I don't wat to feel like I have to hide anymore, in any way. It's tiresome.

I think most of my co-workers would be okay with it. It's just other certain folks that I have enough trouble with already. They don't need much excuse to make life difficult for other people.

"Requiem" by Ana Juan

2005-09-09T19:27:00.000-07:00

You know art when you see it because it makes you feel something.

house ain't burnin'

2005-09-09T09:40:00.000-07:00

I suppose it's better to come home for lunch and find you've left your computer on than it is to find you left the stove on!

Actually, in regards to that previous post, I woke up around three because I crashed when I got home around 8. I got up and undressed. I had at least removed my shoes. Yesterday was a long day. Out of my work clothes, I laid back down and tried to sleep. Then I was too awake....

Feed My Lambs

2005-09-09T04:10:00.000-07:00

I like how we help each other along just by being.

Last night, a young male blogger who also works for the library system was at my branch for a farewell send-off. He told me that he really hasn't been reading my blog... in part due to some issues with our dearly beloved server AOL. He wants me to post in my LiveJournal. AOL is just the one that flows for me, the one that gets me responses from people that I am coming to know. Although it's true that Joe, this fella, and Josh, the youngster who inspired me to start blogging are locals... they are also young men in their 20s. I am actually old enough to be their mother. What business do we have with each other? Why would a young man want to chill with an aging lesbian who lives at the poverty level? Huh?

It's nice that they think I'm cool enough to read my blog. At the same time, it's kind of worrisome. For all I know, having come out to these young men via my journal may be a big part of the reason I cannot seem to move up in the library system. Loose lips sink ships.

I was denied an interview after applying for a regular full-time position with the library system. Having work their almost four years, I was told that I did not have enough training. Draw your own conclusions and just know that the person who did that to me absolutely won a negative view in my eyes. What a crock of bull!

But I didn't mean to go off on that neurotic and bitter tangent. I was talking about how we help each other get along. I sometimes correspond with someone on-line with whom I relate well, I think she appreciates that my being gay means I don't have to ask questions she doesn't particularly care to answer when we do talk.

I was just reminded of a friend in college who had "Feed My Lambs" on her wall. She told me that we are all each other's hosts and each other's guests. It's funny how much more I learned being at college than I did from going to college.

One of the other great statements of that time was from Ivan Guarino, one of a mob of "deadheads" who moved to school together. He said, "We are all the same." When I tried to protest, he shook his head at me. It's true, as odd as it seems. We all bleed, we all fart and we all need food, shelter and belongingness. Some of us are over-sensitive and some of us are unconscionably sociopathic, but we are all the same.

It's funny. I occasionally correspond with another blogger and our correspondence serves to enrich us both it seems. You gotta love that. It's a new kind of relationship for me. I have written since elementary school, but to know that someone is actually affected by and responds to what I say... well, that's a trip.

I see my future before me. It doesn't look too promising. I can see having nothing making my old age really suck. However I will have lived a life that amused me some. I will have given something out that people can use and some part of me will trickle forth into the future though no one will know that it started with me. That doesn't matter.

Names are just vanity. In the overall scheme of things, we are just a pool of writhing life with output, some of which is beauty, some of which is waste and the rest of which is more writhing life. Maybe all of it is vanity.

Composed @ 4:30 a.m.

bad news/good news

2005-09-08T04:37:00.000-07:00

Bad news: I have to go to get up and go to work again today.

Good news: Saturday night I'm going to Em's for the weekend.

Bad news: A dear co-worker is leaving us for good.

Good news: We are throwing a little wing-ding for her tonight.

Bad news: I think I am falling into some serious love with my new girl but she is two counties away. Nobody else has ever been "serious."

Good news: My affection is returned. She hasn't said "it" yet but she lets me know that she wants me. We talk for hours at a time. (Ok, mostly she talks.)

Bad news: I am miserable at work. I have got to get out of there and make a real living.

Good news: It's gonna happen sooner or later. I just have to keep working at it. Hmmm, maybe I should move two counties away....

in quiet words of Creek

2005-09-05T18:59:00.000-07:00

This morning I got to go back to the Lake Okeechobee area to visit with Seminole friends. The Labor Day Rodeo is a tradition, but we don't go for the rodeo. We go to see our Seminole friends who set up booths for pumpkin bread and sewn crafts such as palm dolls, shirts, skirts, necklaces and bracelets.

We watched the parade until it started to rain and then we ran to the booths and watched the rest of the parade go by.

Finally, the rain stopped and people began returning to the booths. I was seated beside Judy, approximately... 40-something years old (but I could be wrong), and her mother, Shule (pronounced shoe-lah), who is about 70 now.

Every time someone came up to the booth and asked the price of something, Judy would turn to her mother and speak to her in Creek. Shule would answer and Judy would tell the customer the price. Sometimes it was more or less than the last person was quoted. I found it very amusing and not at all improper.

Moses Osceola, the president of the tribe, came to the booth and spoke for quite a while with my father about projects that are pending with the tribe, including gathering supplies to send to victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Judy leaned over and spoke to me. "They tell us that hurricanes are indians so we needn't fear them," she said. Then she added, "My sister-in-law is a member of the Wind tribe, so we are protected." She laughed, "We have nothing to worry about."

As we sat quietly watching everything happen around us, I noticed that people would come up to the booth and start to ask Judy, who sat in the middle, about the product and the price but then would turn to me to finish whatever they were saying.

I just looked at them and pointed to Judy.

You shouldn't make assumptions. Indians, Seminoles anyway, are very reserved. They speak to you only when they want or need to. Waiting to be spoken to is usually the best course of action unless you have actual business with them.

Selling things from a vendors booth is very odd. It is a job for people who can allow other people to approach in various ways, paw the wares, act friendly and then walk away.

I don't know that I could sell something I made and like to any putz who comes along. I wonder how artists learn to let go. I guess you have to be in it for something else... the interaction, thebeing part of something, the casting of your goods into the universe, the money.

But the Seminoles do not have to sell food and bead art and clothes. They could give up cattle if they wanted to. The casino brings in a dividend for every registered member of the tribe. It is enough to live comfortably on without lifting a finger.

It is an extreme turn-around from a mere 30 years ago when the tribe lived in extreme poverty, in tired shacks, eking out an existence from ranching and crafts, and supplementing their tables with what they could catch or grow.

Yet it is tragic in a way. Even though the kids now go to school to learn about their culture and their language, and even though a Seminole can go to any college in Florida for free, they now have little real incentive to do much of anything.

But Shule never stops. She always works at something. Much has happened in three generations time.

It occurs to me now that I should have gathered some of Shule's treasures to send to a certain party in the Virginia area who enjoys baubles and other people's art.

**For your edification: The term "Squaw" is a very rude word. You must not refer to an indian woman that way in less you intend extreme insult. "Squaw" is the equivalent of female genitalia, and by using it, you liken, and lessen, a woman to her sexual use. Call a woman a "woman." Call her a Seminole woman, a Cherokee woman, a Caucasian woman, a Jewish woman, a black woman if you have to differentiate. Otherwise, give a woman respect. A woman is a woman is a woman. Her free and voluntary attentions are a precious gift. Ain't no "squaw" about it.

5234

Look now

2005-09-04T11:11:00.000-07:00

Other countries, some bidden by the president, others not, come to our aid.

We should have been able to help our own but we have weakened ourselves. We sent everything overseas. We sent kids and we sent money. The vanity of the Bushes spent so much of it in waste.

Look at who is sending us doctors, medicine, water, fuel. CUBA is sending us help. Cuba! Afghanistan, where people are starving will send money. Poor Honduras, too. Venezuela,not one of the countries that's terribly happy with us. Germany... Russia. IRAN. The Netherlands. France. Japan. Australia. Singapore. Canada. Sri Lanka. Qatar. Israel. China. Saudi Arabia. Italy.

Friends and foes.

We have had offers of aid from several other countries as well. Greece, Guatemala, Indonesia, India, Ecuador, Paraguay, Norway, New Zealand, Thailand... remember some of these countries are still recovering from their own natural disasters... tsunamis and such. The list goes on. Columbia, Belgium, Armenia, Dominica, Iceland, Guyana, El Salvador, Jamaica, Hungary, the Dominican Republic, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Portugal, Switzerland (Oh, God yes! Send Chocolate to these people!), Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Taiwan.... Forgive me if I've missed anyone.

I'm not just thinking today about the victims but about the people there to help.

I remember what local officials and workers went through and how traumatized they were. Pray for them. Give what you can.

2005-09-04T08:16:00.000-07:00

OK, I agree.

Our president's response to the Hurricane was slow because he is a dullard who does not give a rat's ass about the bulk of the American people, ESPECIALLY the poor people. He would just as soon that we died off, leaving the place for him and his pals.

He is an elitist. Did you overlook that when you chose him? He is a multi-millionaire in a family that is very, very powerful. He doesn't give a **** for you or me.

It takes the stupid *man* a while to think and it takes a while for his people to make up lines for him to say.

Have you ever seen true compassion on this *******'s face? He ought to be skewered, or better yet, dropped naked into the streets of Iraq.

I saw a picture of Sen. Frist of Tenn., using his medical skills to help people on the scene. here's the kind of man we need for president. Someone who gets in there with his sleeves rolled up. A Bob Graham, a Jimmy Carter.

How is it that we declined water-purification aid for Louisianna from Sweden? Who the hell are we, anyway? We are not playing the game right.

But we are taking gasoline from South Korea. We are letting in 25 aid workers from the Phillipines. What is that all about?

I can't do anything but blog about it. It's so frustrating. I tried to give blood but my veins were too thin. I barely survive and can't donate much cash. But I look around the lace at what I do have and think how fortunate I truly am.

Not only do I have clothes and dishes and a warm, dry place to sleep, I have food and water (that I had to buy, but it's good water) and I have parents and friends who I know will open their door to me without hesitation. Heck, I have keys to Dad's and Cristy lets me walk on in....

Ramona, too... tried to keep me at her house overnight when they got back from vacation. No one has tried to rob, rape or kill me. I have been robbed before, twice, but never while I was there on the scene. Call me "blessed."

I have been viewing the disaster and reading the reports. I am glad I waited. You only get so much true information in the midst of the fury to get news out. There is too much ego among newscasters.

I'm sorry if this entry is more than enough for you now, having heard all about the Hurricane and its troubles for days now. I want thisto stand. I want us not to forget that there are no promises and that security is just an illusion.

People from Louisiana are being transported to Arizona, Utah, Texas, Colorado and who knows where else. They might not ever go back to the place they used to know as home, a place that might be in their blood, a place that might be in their hearts.

Imagine losing everything except what you can schlepp. Imagine having to leave your pets. Imagine seeking shelter only to be robbed, raped or killed.

America has had relatively few overwhelming disasters. This one is stupendous.

2005-09-04T03:47:00.000-07:00

A jarring blow to the mid-section of the country, this Katrina. You have to feel it.

There was no gas Friday in this part of town Friday. People had freaked and filled up en masse. Today though, there was no problem... well, no problem finding "Regular."

I pumped up the tires on my bicycle yesterday evening. It wouldn't actually hurt me to use self-powered transportation. This girl has some extra booty....

I can't complain, though. Well, yeah, the cost of transportation just rose considerably. I could complain. Still, none of my relative is floating in the swill of Louisiana's devastation. They all have houses to sleep in tonight, and food and dry clothes. They aren't missing their pets. They haven't lost family heirlooms. Their cars aren't in trees. Their houses aren't broken or floating or completely waterlogged.

The truth is, for someone living at just about the poverty level, I'm doing pretty good. I have what I need.

This morning though, in shelters in Louisianna and Mississippi, there are people dreaming that when they wake up it will have all been a terrible dream. There are people in Texas who have been taken away from the horror and from knowing what is going on with their people.

I saw a picture of a dead man floating in the water. I noticed that his wallet was on his head. At least someone gave him that much... letting someone know who he was after they lifted whatever cash he had.

Lower mid-section bloggers are computerless today. They'd love to tell you what's going on. Exhausted care workers with no end in sight. Convoys of aid from other states needing shelter. Bonds forming between people thrown together. Land pirates looting their neighbors, their own people.

I was touched by a picture of a 5-year-old black girl holding hands with a 105-year-old white woman as the elder was wheeled to new shelter. Not that a baby will remember holding hands with a god....

Personal misery becomes public domain as photographed grief becomes symbolic to the nation.

Once photographed, will anyone help though? How will they recover? Will insurance companies deliver?

And what will become of the area? Will they rebuild? Will Texas start to fill?

And what of the environment, littered with alligators, oil, pollution, corpses human and non-human, building debris and garbage?

Yesterday, I was reading about the libraries in that region. Some of the libraries were spared, but their contents are likely ruined. What other great things have been destroyed? What other treasures are we now deprived of?

If you aren't heartsick, you aren't paying attention.

5211

2005-09-04T03:10:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning:

Lightning woke me; a quiet flash not followed by a report of thunder, but so bright that it illuminated the inside of my eyelids. My blinds are closed. The awnings are down on the north side of the room. And I am sleeping on the floor. Still a great, quiet flash of light woke me.

Bollywood

If you have not yet experienced an Indian musical, I highly recommend going out and trying to see one. Or seeing if you can't borrow one from your library.

The stories are tales of love, mostly. Sometimes they are epic and filled with music and dance. Sometimes they are stories punctuated by music and dance. And these movies are filmed around the world.

The first one I saw was filmed in India and Egypt and Scotland. I recognized the castle that the principles were undulating around. That's no India, I said. The credits proved me right.

The stars these movies are good actors and singers and dancers. There's one fellow in the flick I just watched who seems to be the Indian incarnation of Elvis. He is gorgeous even by Western standards. Cleft chin, bluish eyes, high cheek bones, symmetrical face, big muscles with a lean build. Good God, were I straight.... And then when he sang and danced, he was so perfect and said to myself, "There's a good chance that boy is gay. He is just too good."

Yahoo! blog

The other day at work I walked by the computer bank and noticed that a young woman was blogging. I can't help the human instinct of curiousity, so I passed behind her quickly and noted that she was blogging on Yahoo! and that she had just written, "Why must it be so hot in Florida?"

Sproing! Rapid cartoonish shaking of the head in disbelief. Eyes wide. Sigh.

Let me explain. This is going to take a while because there is more than one reason: "Relative proximity to the equator...."

My goodness. Who the hell comes here thinking it's 76 degrees Fahrenheit all year long? DUH!

My heart hurts.

2005-09-01T03:55:00.000-07:00

I have a fractional idea of what Hurricane Katrina survivors are going through. I was lucky. I made it, thanks to my family last year. And we didn't have to deal with overwhelming flooding, just debris, the absence of power and traffic control, the shortage of gas and food, and the need to clean and repair everything.

It was exhausting and depressing, but really, we were blessed.

The losses now are so devastating, I cannot fathom it all.

But on a personal note, this Em, this woman who has been working her way into my heart for a while now, is having an issue with the way that I talk.

I do not speak in one serious voice. Apparently I use varied accents and inflections as I talk. It drives her crazy. I mean, it really makes her nuts.

No one else has ever complained or gotten stuck on the way I say things.

I am not about to change the way I talk. She's going to have to deal with it. I told her I was willing to make compromises/concessions but not to change who I am. I like myself and lots of other people do, too. No one else is bothered by my speech patterns!

It's such a problem for her it may toll our death knell. We already have enough obstacles. The distance and the price of gas, the fact that I can only be with her when her sons are not around, the fact that neither of us has much spending money.

I've already made some adaptations to be with her. Now it's her turn, I'm thinking.

a brilliant sickness

2005-08-31T06:44:00.000-07:00

http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050826144809990012

There will be no heaven for the one who started that rumor. But what evil genius to get them to kill themselves, to use their fear. The Iraqis are not enured to daily death. They still love and they still grieve.

Je me souviens

2005-08-31T06:21:00.000-07:00

I was out in the yard this morning, taking an ax to very dead and very hard orange tree limbs. I have forgotten how healthy it is to whack your cares away. My arms need exercise. Maybe that will fatten my forlorn blood vessels so I can give blood again soon.

I was out there, whacking away and thinking about France and how stupid enmity is.

Without the friendship of the Marquis de Lafayette, we would have had a much harder time fighting King George's men. And that is only the beginning.

The people of France pay more homage to our World War II heroes than we do!

There come a time in every friendship when there must be disagreement. Does that mean that the friendship has to end?

How selfish. A friend who doesn't follow you blindly is less of a friend? I don't believe that's right.

Sometimes you have to stand for what you believe no matter who it hurts.

In my family, we know the French to be friendly. And if you look back on our short 229 years as a country, you'll see that France has been beside us all along.

They have the right to say no, to keep their sons and daughters out of an unjust war. I guarantee you our congressmen aren't sending their kids. Why should we expect France to?

France is a pretty country, full of beauty. The people are nice, and leaner than us, too.

So there! Nanny-nanny-boo-boo!

Get over yourself!

Viva la France!

Go ahead and hate your neighbor

2005-08-31T06:06:00.000-07:00

ARTIST: Coven
TITLE: One Tin Soldier
Lyrics and Chords

Listen children to a story
That was written long ago
'Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley folk below
On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath a stone
And the valley people swore they'd
Have it for their very own

/ C G / Am Em / F C / F G / 1st, 2nd, 3rd / F GC C /

{Refrain}
Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of heaven
You can justify it in the end
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away

/ C G / F C / : / C F... / x C /

So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill
Asking for the buried treasure
Tons of gold for which they'd kill
Came an answer from the kingdom
With our brothers we will share
All the secrets of our mountain
All the riches buried there

... / F GC C D - /

Now the valley cried with anger
Mount your horses draw your sword
And they killed the mountain people
So they won their just reward
Now they stood beside the treasure
On the mountain dark and red
Turned the stone and looked beneath it
Peace on earth was all it said

/ D A / Bm F#m / G D / G A / 1st, 2nd, 3rd / G... D /

{Refrain}

/ D A / G D / : / D G... / x D /

There's a word...

2005-08-31T04:28:00.000-07:00

... that Cristy absolutely hates.

There's another word that Cristy absolutely hates. And when the two words are used together she'd like to slap the person who verbalized them. But Cristy is not a violent person so she gives them a disgusted look and tells them not to say it again.

Janice, another co-worker/friend from the animal hospital loves tormenting Cristy. She'll look at Cristy with her freckled face and bright blue eyes and say the words like she means them. It's funny, actually.

Ah... I have a problem with one of these words myself. Unfortunately, it is a word that lesbians use often, It is a word they like to hear. (No double-entendre intended.)

The woman I'm seeing now likes me to use the word in a sentence of intent.

It's not a word I am comfortable with. It seems so silly to be caught up on a word.

I might just be that the word starts with my least favorite letter of the alphabet. I'm sure it goes back to some silly childhood thing.

Or it may be that I have heard the term used disrespectfully and am having trouble moving beyond that connotation.

But if I say something that makes my lover pull me tighter to her, I'm gonna have to get over it.

5160

seen by me

2005-08-30T20:59:00.000-07:00

lowest gas price today: $2.62 (Circle K)

lowest gas price three Saturdays ago: $2.49 (Hess)

Wednesday afternoon: $2.79

gas this coming Saturday: (I'll let you know)

Friday night: $2.99 and there was no gas.

Hey, is it me or have we changed from the gold standard to the crude oil standard?

Gerald and Linda and Hope

2005-08-30T16:24:00.000-07:00

Again in the grocery store this evening, the last man I kissed was sneaking up on me. This time he pulled his cap down over his eyes and was talking on his cellphone and walking towards me. This time I saw him. I put out my hand to stop him at chest level. He just laughed and handed me the phone so I could say Hello to his wife.

I chatted with her just a brief moment. Of course, she wanted to gossip. He rescued me by saying he didn't want his minutes used up. (Something Linda is very capable of!) It's so funny though. I have been away from these people for four years and yet it's like yesterday when I run into Gerald. He's a nice guy. He knows so much about me and yet he likes me, regardless.

I mused on this as I left the store. These people really are my friends. And I'm just now realizing it.

(Hope is their daughter.)