Yes-there will always be more questions!

1. Is it just me, or does anyone else think it's silly that in weight loss product commercials, the "before" photo is always wearing the same red bikini? If I lost that much weight by popping one of those pills or drinking one of those teas, I'd be wearing the red bikini in the after picture, but a one piece skirt before!

2. Speaking of commercials-does anyone really believe that if you don't call in the "next fifteen minutes," you won't get the great deal? Or why the "shipping and processing fee" is more than the product would be worth if one bought it retail?

3. Why is iced coffee so hard to make at home? Not that it can't be done, but it just doesn't come close to Thai Iced Coffee from a coffee shop.

4. When people consistently claim to wish political candidates would "focus on the issues," why do so many vote on anything but? It always seems that red-herrings, lies and high drama fuel elections.

5. Eric Rudolph, Fred Phelps, Ralph Ovadal, Ralph Reed, Scott Walker, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Darrell Issa, ...I know that there are women  involved in the anti-choice movement. But the ones who are most strident or who become violent are white men. The statistics that I read say that most Americans are pro choice, but anti abortion. I've been told that the two positions are mutually exclusive, but I disagree. It is possible to be against abortion, but to realize that the real choice belongs to individuals, not to the government. Is it possible (playing devil's advocate here) that this is the result of the women's movement, and white men not understanding their place in the new world? The old jokes had to do with keeping women in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. Now a woman can use birth control, and go to work and by her own shoes. Many have decided to be single parents, and DO include the child's father in the child's life. But some people just can't adjust to a changing world and changing roles. So they become frustrated, and eventually snap into violence-if a woman can have an abortion, he can't keep her "barefoot and pregnant." Reproductive choice is the minimum of a woman's right to determine her own destiny. This is why educated women in third world countries, who have access to birth control, have fewer children. Historically, women were forced into marriages for the economic strength of their parents, and if they didn't produce male children, they could be discarded by their husband. Women had no rights, and whom to marry and having children were among the major things proving the second class status of women. Yes, I know this is an emotionally charged issue, and there has been little movement in changing some minds since Roe v Wade. But the fact is, it has been law for over thirty years. Our current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court says he will not violate legal precedent. It is time that we all move on. Yes, there are still people who think the country screwed up when it was decided that schools should be integrated, but for the most part, we have moved on. It's time to do that here. It is almost a full generation that have had the right for a safe, medical abortion. Let the next generation wonder why the bombers and shooters who plot to murder physicians and medical providers were not classified as the domestic terrorists that they are. If we do hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are, indeed, created equal. Lets stop the several states that have decided to make it harder for a woman to make her own choice regarding this basic right from taking it out of the hands of women and their doctors and placing it in the hands of a bunch of middle-aged white guys who needs to acknowledge that women are people too.

Some More Questions, and MAYBE An Answer

If you don't have to weigh it, how do you know it's under 70 pounds?

I was at WalMart waiting for a prescription a few weeks ago, and noticed a sign on the wall. The sign said, "We are required by law to ask for identification when dispensing any controlled substance. We apologize for any inconvenience." Now, shopping at WalMart is, in every instance, a soul-crushing experience. The store is always hot, looking for a decent bunch of bananas is an adventure not unlike an Amazon River safari, the ratio of cashiers to customers is 1 to 473, and the pharmacy has a sign up apologizing for "inconveniencing" customers to show ID when taking home prescriptions of a controlled substance? Why?

Why is it that when walking on a trail, walkers are the friendliest, runners come in a distant second, and the least likely to be friendly to others on the trail are people on bicycles? 

Why does a smoothie from McDonald's have 54 grams of sugar? I thought I was doing the "healthier" thing by grabbing a smoothie made with yogurt and fruit. Should I just get an Egg McMuffin and be done with it when I run late and need to grab a bite for breakfast?

One of the best selling books of all times is "What to Expect When You're Expecting," and the series of parental guides it spawned. People who have children try to learn something about parenting; why don't people who have dogs? Dogs are our best friends-truly. But they are also descended from animals that can do great harm, and some bite. We have a neighbor whose dogs are so aggressive that last Sunday as I walked my dog past his window, his dogs were trying so hard to get through the glass to get my dog that the next sound I heard was glass shattering. There was a beautiful dog on the trail last week; possibly a St. Bernard mix. The gentleman owned by the dog was taking a breather on a bench, and as we approached, his dog began to lunge and bark ferociously. He told me that the dog was not dog-friendly; I just walked by and said, "Shame" If we will have our best friends around other best friends, they should be socialized. It's not hard in most cases, some breeds take a little more work. But it matters. 

I've asked this before, but why do conservatives believe there is only one amendment to the constitution, and it is the second amendment? I'm asking again because of a case in Florida that was discussed this week amongst some friends regarding a new law prohibiting pediatricians from discussing child-proofing guns in the home with the parents of their patients. While some agreed that the new law was problematic because of the first amendment, which says the government can't tell anyone what they can or can't say, they also said the conversation didn't belong in a doctor's office. Really? Does that apply to advising parents how to child proof their household cleaners with toddlers around? "Who knew my baby could get into the cabinet and drink the Drano?" "How could I know my child knew how to get into my bedside drawer and get my loaded gun?" Some parents are so blissfully ignorant, even the ones who have read the book described above, that the idea of removing a gun from harms way for their toddlers may not ever occur to them. If a child gets hold of a loaded gun and does him or herself some harm, or harms a playmate, that doctor would be called upon to undo the damage-IF the child survives. That negligent parent would then be arrested for child endangerment. What's wrong with preventive care? Aren't we supposed to be FOR trying to use common sense and create healthier lives for ourselves and our children? No one is saying to take the gun out of the home-just child proof the home so children don't have access to loaded guns. I'm pretty sure no one in a red state like Florida would DARE suggest getting rid of the gun altogether.

My dog-loving friends and I have had many conversations about scent-rolling, and some of the noxious smells our dogs come away with. One day I was on the way home with my dog after she had done that, and I thought I was passing an apartment in which someone had died, and it turned out she had scent rolled in something that smelled beyond horrible. I had to wash her three times, with Dawn detergent, to get the smell off. The funny thing was the smug look on her face as she wore the scent, and the extreme sadness on her as I took it away. I used to think it was something about wearing the smells of a higher ranking dog. But this past Sunday, I got another idea. Walking on a trail that we very much enjoy, we came upon the body of a dead squirrel. Her eyes glazed over, literally, and she dropped to the body to roll in it, and I shouted her out of her stupor before she could wear that maggoty smell home in the car with me. But I thought of all the times during the same walk that she saw a live squirrel and she took off like the 'great, white hunter,' to the end of her leash, and then sniffed the ground where the squirrel had been. What I realized was that perhaps her vestigial hunting instinct took over, and she wanted to scent roll in the odor of her prey-as a disguise! If she smelled like a squirrel, perhaps she could sneak up on one without them running up a tree! Human hunters do it all the time-rubbing ointment on their bodies so that they don't scare off deer; did we learn that from dogs 12,000 years ago? I don't know if my new theory is right or not, but I'll still hit the Dawn the next time she comes home smelling like that. 

We Trudge On

I don't guess we can ever know what will happen on a given day to create an attitude of reflection. There were several things for me this week-weather, weddings of the century, conversations with friends, the suicide of a 19 year old second cousin. The thing is, when one is from a background like mine, from birth in a Southern Baptist home, it is hard to let go of the idea of God. Even though I never, ever felt very believing, and it took me years to say the word "atheist" out loud, I still struggle with how to define myself, my values, what I believe in. I always wonder, when my heart breaks for a friend who has suffered a loss, does it seem as valuable to them when I say, "My heart goes out to you," or "My thoughts are with you," as it would if I said, "I'm praying for you?"

There is no question that that my mother's use of God to explain the unexplainable, or shut down conversation about anything bigger, is part of the reason that I continue to struggle. I do believe that simplifying a complicated world is the reason for some to believe that everything on earth can be explained with a simple, "God did it." In conversations about evolution, it is often said by those who don't accept it that "The world couldn't have been created by accident because there is too much order and beauty in the world." There is indeed beauty. But there is also ugly and dangerous, and there is no order. Apart from the simplest level, there is only chaos and suffering. The only order still visible to me is that night follows day; moon cycles are twenty-eight days. Any deeper than that, and the order disappears. There are the seasons, but when was the last time that winter cold was followed by a spring warm up, then summer heat and a fall cool down? That order is gone, and the warmer the climate becomes, the more that order will be lost.

There are genetic diseases which cause great suffering for innocent children, there are complications of aging that make getting older hurt for some people. I'm aware of people only in their 60s and 70s who are bedridden, and have feeding tubes because of diseases of aging.  Believers quote the bible and say that God "visits the sins of the fathers to the seventh generation." What kind of loving god would do such a thing to an innocent baby? Genetic mutations happen, but are almost always harmful to an organism. It is by sheer accident that an organism ever benefits from a mutation, but it happens sometimes, unpredictably, and when it does it may improve the survival chances of that organisms offspring. How can a loving god that planned and created everything explain that away?

So, how is all this connected? I guess the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, and all the hoopla over it in the US started me thinking. Some of my friends wanted to watch the wedding, to see the clothes and the whole fairy tale aspect of the event. I, who have been accused of taking some things too seriously, was angry about the whole thing. First of all, news organizations have been laying people off, they only print stories off the wires, and say they have no money to fund investigative reporters to root out government corruption, but they can send entire staffs to London for a full week to cover the wedding. As if that were not unconscionable enough, there were riots in the streets of Britain just a month or so ago because the economy has hit them so hard that they have enacted "austerity measures," which affect the lower classes of the British public. But the British people paid fifty-million pounds for this lavish wedding? My friends did convince me that it is okay to look at the positive side of the affair and find something happy in it-and there is that. No question, this young couple seems very much in love. But this happy affair is being talked about as the marriage that will save the monarchy. Who benefits from that? They have no political power, and they cost the British taxpayers an obscene amount of money every year. I've read the original versions of the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, and they aren't pretty. Neither is this wedding once you get past the facade.

It doesn't help that on the day of the wedding, I learned of the suicide of the youngest son of my cousin. She and I were born the same year, and during our teen years we had much in common. She'd had a tragic life-her father, my mother's brother, was killed in Viet Nam when we were 6. Her step father died when she was a young adolescent. She descended into drug abuse and promiscuity, and then was 'saved.' Our common religious beliefs at the time made us close, and I never shared with anyone my doubts. She met her first husband at a very famous fundamentalist college in the deep south. They were married a long time, but he was an abuser, and she finally left when he nearly let her die in a suspicious fire in their home. They had six children. The night before the  royal wedding, she found his body. When I called, she was under sedation, understandably. But another family member was able to talk to her, and she said "nothing but God will get me through this." I know all the answers of believers when the great "Why?" is asked. But it seems that instead of getting a mother through such an inestimable tragedy, "He" might have acted to prevent this event from happening to a woman who had devoted her entire life to Him. Maybe this is where I get off track; I think there should be an answer to the great "Why?"

I remember in the mid-1980s, when my professional and social life took me out of the sheltered circle of other white, southern baptist southern conservatives I'd grown up with. I worked with people from other countries, who practiced other religions like the "evil" Catholicism and Islam. And they loved their families, and worked hard to provide decent lives and education for them. I've not seen a single one of those people turn up on the news with bombs strapped to their chests. I became friends with these people, and when I had them to my home for dinner, we talked about religion and politics and movies-almost like "good Christian" people I grew up with. As a result of these relationships, and conversations about religion, I learned how similar our religions were, and I began to question the notion that there is only one right and true religion. And one night, I was at my youngest sister's home, and sharing all these new feelings I began to just sob because, "...if anything we were ever taught was true, "I'm going to hell now."

From there my evolution became complete to atheism, as I observed more and more of the behaviors described above, and studied to a degree with a minor in biology. Some in my family have never heard me say the "A-word;" some have, and one of them sent me an email this week saying, "I don't mean to be on a soapbox here, but don't give up on God, he hasn't given up on you." Now, I know that this person loves me, and that she is doing what she believes her "job" as a Christian is. But it is also someone who has never once asked me why my journey brought me here. I work hard to respect the views and beliefs of those I know who believe in anything, and it is exhausting and painful at times that I do not receive a modicum of respect in return for my beliefs. On some level, I know why she never asked me. She is a woman in her 60s who has never questioned what she was taught is the true and correct way to believe, she just accepted it. My mother is the same way. She not only never, even now, questions anything she was ever taught, she gets angry when questioned. Normally I would reply to that email  with an unemotional,  "Thank you." This time I didn't respond at all. I was emotionally drained and  honestly didn't know what to say. 

Is It Irony-or Something Else Entirely?

I try to keep an open mind. Always have. Even about politics, about which I feel quite passionate at times. I know that there us corruption on both sides-no one needs to try to convince me that there is bribery and short-sightedness, and narrow mindedness on the left as well as the right. But I've been considering this essay for some months, and have waited til now to write this because I have been looking for some equal oddities on the left to the ones I will list here-I just can't find them. Perhaps if any of my friends on the right should read this, and know of some comparable ironies, you will let me know. I promise to keep an open mind. Promise.

1. I'm starting with one I've discussed with friends before. Many of my conservative friends like to complain about the poor-(though they also make clear that in this case, they do mean minorities) raising their children on public aid, and continuing to have children, even though needing public assistance should be a sign that one cannot afford to "properly" raise those children-providing for their food and shelter, and medical needs. Ronald Reagan, who used subtle racial tactics to win in 1980, turning the south away from democrats for the next many decades, also coined the term "welfare queen." Everyone I know who subscribes to this class warfare approach saw the picture in their minds instantly of a black woman with multiple children in tow, getting a larger welfare check for each one, driving a Cadillac, and no two of the children had the same, or a present father. Books were written at the time to dispel this myth, including one called "Myth of the Welfare Queen," but the idea persists. Which makes it seem odd to me that the right is against the funding of Planned Parenthood. I do understand the abortion issue; only 3% of Planned Parenthood services cover abortion, so the argument that funding Planned Parenthood is "federal funding of abortion" is wrong and dishonest. The purpose of Planned Parenthood is contained in the name-it is a service provided to help women and poor families who can't afford family planning services to access them. They off free or low cost birth control pills, educational services and women's health services. The education and birth control is the major key to why the conservative desire for defunding makes no sense. Study after study has shown that when women are educated and empowered to choose family size, they have fewer children. So, funding Planned Parenthood should provide a conservative dream come true-fewer welfare queens having baby after baby paid for by public money.

2. About a month ago, junior senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul, made some comments that new regulations on coal companies to protect coal miners would prove too costly. On its surface, this comment makes sense coming from a tea-party darling like Paul. The tea party presents itself as "Joe Six-Pack," who is tired of government intrusion into the lives and choices of individuals and business. So, less regulation is better, right? Well, not for Joe-Six Pack. He is the guy in the mine who dies of black lung disease when he is 42, or when the mines collapse and he is trapped with several friends, no oxygen and poisonous fumes. It is definitely good for the people the tea party purports to hate the most-the East-Coast elites who never get their hands dirty, but make millions on the backs of working class stiffs-like Joe Six Pack. That is certainly what the fat-cats who run the coal companies want to hear their legislators say, "Read my lips-no new regs!" If those guys had their druthers, they would provide no health care at all for the guys who give us the source of over 50% of our electricity we love so much in this country. The lack of push for help for the working class from the tea party makes no sense to me at all...until one looks into their books and sees how many super rich far-right activists fund the tea party. Yes, Dick Armey-I'm talking to you. If the rich righties pay the tea party to push for legislation that works against the people's interests, doesn't that negate what the tea party says is stands for?

3. Speaking of the new conservatives: Ever since President Obama was elected, the republicans have suddenly become very anti-deficit. We do have a huge deficit, everyone knows it, and I do think blaming it on George W. at this point is an exercise in absurdity. That said, part of the reason the deficit sprang up like a corpse flower under Bush is because he sent our soldiers into two wars that he didn't bother to write into the family budget plan. Now that president Obama has sent us into Libya, and said basically the same thing when he told us about it, Bush can no longer be blamed for our budget shortfalls. But I think there is a language problem here. I'm not sure that most people really understand what is meant by a "deficit in the trillions." What it means is that we are spending more than we bring in. By a lot, and it is creating a debt. That means money we spend on a credit card, and we won't be able to hold on until we're dead to have it paid off because a nation's debt never goes away. We need the money we bring in to cover our household expenses, which are great. True, we can cut funding for Planned Parenthood and health care for people who retire without large pensions to sustain them. If this were an American family, someone would be looking for a part time job because there is not enough to help pay the bills we owe on what we've borrowed and take care of our regular obligations. Therefore, revenue must be raised. There is no logical argument to be made any other way. None. So republicans want to cut money to the old and poor (they want to pull the plug on Grandma!) And President Obama says he will go along with that. Why? Because that's what he does-goes along with the ugly, cold and hateful in order to keep his poll numbers up. (So, how's that working for ya?) He doesn't want the drama of ugly fights, or people in congress going before the "liberal media" and calling him a socialist, or saying that he's "anti-business." But I digress. We must raise revenue. Must. Gas prices are about to be higher than they've ever been-.25 away, and rising weekly. Higher gas prices mean higher food prices-food has to be transported, and trucks use fuel, therefore, higher prices going to the store. Higher fuel prices mean higher electricity, so the grocery store passes the cost of transporting their product, and keeping it safe to us. We've already spent the last 20 years with our incomes going down, while the richest have spent it with their incomes going up. Corporate profits have been obscene for ages comparatively. So the only way to increase revenue is to raise taxes on the wealthiest, and eliminate the loopholes that allow multi-billion dollar corporations to pay no taxes. When Representative Paul Ryan's budget plan was criticized recently, someone (I think it might have been Senator McConnell of Kentucky, not sure though) claimed that his plan "eliminated the loopholes that allowed General Electric to get a" "ginormous" refund from the IRS. "YOU LIE!" The only way to do that is to rewrite the tax code, which Paul Ryan didn't touch. He wrote a budget plan. Bottome line, we must improve our bottom line. We cannot do that without raising revenue, and the middle and lower economic classes in this country can't take anymore of the weight. Our backs are breaking as it is-even those among us fortunate enough to have a job. Taxes on the wealthy and giant corporations must be raise. The argument that this will cause small business to be broken by the burden, and prevent them from creating jobs is a non-starter. There are ways to protect small business and and the merely "comfortable" class from being harmed. Don't play games with our heads-find a way to make enough money to pay the bills, and still live a decent life. That's what real Americans do every day.

4. I have stopped looking when I see Donald Trump on my TV. I'm not going into all the arguments against him-they are well known and documented. But it scares me when he talks about going into Libya and "take the oil." Do we really need a rich imperialist running our government? Is being a deceitful jerk and a bully the best we can do for president? Haven't we learned lessons from annexing countries for their resources? It never works out well for the empire in the end. Never. Like it or not, Libya, Iran and Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and China are all sovereign nations. We do not have the moral authority to invade any of them for their oil, or any other resource. It's not ours to take. Just because we have no control over our addiction doesn't mean we are allowed to rob the drug store for our fix. If it was (once again) a poor heroin addict suggesting violently attacking someone to get his next hit of his drug of choice, he would go to jail. Trump, on the other hand gets taken seriously as a presidential candidate? Help me a little here-I don't understand!

5. Speaking of Libya. Have we spoken of Libya enough? Probably not. Especially from the perspective that keeps haunting me. I grew up in the Viet Nam era. The war ended when I was a sophomore in high school, and I've had relatives and friends who fought there, scarred for life. There are very few Americans that I know who have ever been taught about how we really got there. We went there to help our allies, the French. Who had invaded and colonized what later became known as "French Indo-China" for its rubber trees. This was before our insane craze to find ever more uses for petroleum products lead us to invent synthetic rubber-which may have saved many trees, but has not helped with our need for ever more petroleum. The Chinese wanted the French to leave Vietnam back in the 1940s. The French are our allies. We help our friends, even to keep their empires. So we sent in "advisers" under Eisenhower. Then Kennedy, then we entered a full-scale "police action," or some might call it a "war." We were there long enough to lose over 50,000 young American lives, and then to leave, bringing the wounded and the walking wounded home to disrespect and neglect. The United States only gets about 3% of its oil from Libya. That's all. The argument that we are skirmishing there, and sending in drones and so forth for humanitarian reasons is mooted by the plea I heard one week after we started bombing Libya from Ivory Coast that we please send help because a vicious dictator was killing his own people. It is also rendered moot by Sierra Leone, Darfur, Syria and others. So if we are not there for humanitarian reasons, we are there for one of two other reasons-either we have a national defense reason, or it has to do with resources. But Libya does not provide many resources for us, so that one doesn't work. Oh, wait-the French. They get much of their oil from Libya. We are helping them to keep their access to cheap oil (I guess they need the petroleum in order to make synthetic rubber since that whole colonializing French Indochina went so terribly wrong.

6. Barak Obama is a socialist. He is trying to take over the country for socialist reasons, and proof of that is that he is appointing people with the title "Czar." This one blows my mind completely. Didn't the communists march the last Czar and his entire family, including his children, to the woods and shoot them all? How can someone be both a communist and czar-happy? Not to mention, every president since Roosevelt has appointed people and given them the title "czar." Every one! To be sure, Obama has the most. But second behind him? George W. Bush. The only one who didn't have any czars in his cabinet since the 1940s was George H.W. Bush. Why not? Because the ones he nominated weren't approved by congress. Another proof that President Obama is a socialist is that during the campaign he made a poorly arranged comment about "spreading the wealth around." Now-most honest people admit that they know he is not a communist, and he did not in any way mean taking the profits from every American endeavor and spreading it around equally to every American. He was referring to tax rates for the wealthy, and to the vastly increased chasm between the salaries of CEO's and their lowest paid employee. It used to be about 40%. No one would argue that the owners who start companies should make the same money as those who work for them. No one-not even the most left-leaning American one can find. But to have grown from 40% to over 400% is insane. Those lowest paid employees are having a rougher and rougher time just getting by without losing their homes, or going bankrupt because of medical costs. The top CEO's get bonuses more than 100 times the lifetime salaries of the lowest paid employee in their companies. Those executives have long since lost the ability to understand what it is like for the real workers who make them so wealthy-even the executives who might have pulled themselves from poverty to wealth. All that Obama meant was that perhaps the gap between the two salaries could be a little smaller. If he were an applicant, perhaps on a second or third interview, it would be clear that what he was talking about is really a benefit the company might provide-profit sharing. Not taking the wealth away from the top and spreading it equally to everyone. Just simple profit sharing. Every move he has made since has demonstrated quite clearly that he is not a communist or a socialist. And the only excuse for anyone who still calls him that is that he/she wants to make people afraid. And a large number of the people afraid of Obama are of an age for whom the word "communist" is still the nastiest word in the English language.

7. Barry Bonds. Roger Clemens. Perhaps Mark McGuire, whose last game with the Cardinals I was present for. They beat Cincinnati. These guys have all been accused of lying to congress. Barry Bonds was found guilty of lying to a grand jury, but many baseball players of the era of the 90s and early 21st century have had all their games tainted by the whole scandal around the use of "performance enhancing" drugs. It's a sad state of affairs, certainly. I wish that I could now be as excited as I was that day in Sept. 1998, when I was on a plane to Casper, Wyoming, and the captain came on the speaker and announced that McGuire had just broken the home run record. The thing about the charge of lying to congress? How can any congressman sit with a straight face and accuse anyone EVER of lying? That's like Newt Gingrich leading the charge against Bill Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinsky while Gingrich himself was having an extra-marital affair. Lying to CONGRESS? What a joke.

I try most of the time to avoid conversations about politics with my family. For one thing, most of them are extremely conservative. But even the ones who lean a bit to the left are not as much "political junkies" as I, and so the conversation can be tiresome for them. But recently, without taking a left/right position, I was talking about Libya to one of my sisters. I said to her, "You know, you and I, regular people, have to learn from our mistakes to get through life. Why can't our elected officials do the same, and stop making the same mistakes over and over again?" One more piece of advice I'd like to give to everyone out there in the public eye if I had the chance: If you see a microphone, assume it is always on.

I'm Sorry-What's The Date Today?

I saw mayflies in March. This week, I've seen junebugs every day, and it is only the first full week of April. We've already had two days of temperatures of 90 F. I've always loved summer nights. Sometimes on a summer night I like to sit outside and feel the balmy breeze, and enjoy the summer sounds and smells, and I just feel languid and serene. This is not a normal state for me, and on the few occasions when I get to enjoy it, I really enjoy it. Well, in between slapping the mosquitoes and scratching their bites. (Mosquitoes love fat chicks, and my legs are a wonderful, glowing target.)

Last night I took my dog for her last evening walk. I decided to break up the pattern a little-always good for both of us. I usually take her out off-leash for her walks around our gated apartment complex-I'm a naturalist, and I think every dog needs some off-leash time to play and sniff. Sometimes I regret it. The first thing that happened was that my "good best friend," Abigail, spotted a neighbor cat in the bushes, and of course, she took to the chase. I smiled at this long standing tradition of nature-dog sees cat, dog chases cat, cat hisses and runs. Dogs keeps chasing, cat runs up tree. Dog stands on two legs, front paws on tree, staring at cat until something comes along to distract her. I called her, and we took out another direction, to the back portion of our property, which is divided from a wild field by a property long fence. The fence is covered with vines and leaves, though there are some spots where the fence is not at ground level, and Abigail can easily slip under, which is worrisome, as we have seen and heard coyotes in the field. She would be a tasty meal for one of those other canids. Usually my concern is ignored completely if she sees a rabbit on our side of the fence-she is gone, and then the rabbit disappears into the brush. Tonight Abigail understood me when I said, "Don't go there!" But there was something strange-other than my little dog understanding English conversation. The balmy wind was so pleasant, the night was fairly clear, so I could see lots of stars as we walked. The big field has a little creek, which is lovely to hear, but sad to see in daylight because of all the trash people throw in it. But I heard the chirrup of crickets toward the creek. I love that sound; it just adds to the summer night ambiance. But I noticed a smell. I couldn't quite place it, but it was very pleasant and familiar. We kept walking. I suppose several of our neighbors were out earlier because Abigail was finding plenty of smells to center on. The smell I caught grew stronger, languid and heavy, as we walked toward the south. I finally realized what it was, but didn't think it was possible-honeysuckle. It is WAY too early for honeysuckle to inhabit our nights. I didn't see anything walking south, but when we got to the end, and turned toward the north to walk back, I did see the vines on the fence in the opposite light, and the honeysuckle vines were covered with blooms-covered! My inner smile came out as I saw those welcome visitors of my favorite summer nights. I hope they haven't bloomed too early. 

Original Purposes

Okay-I have some questions again:
1. There is a new product-I probably can't say the name, but its commercials say, "Liquid water enhancer." WTF????????? Just drink some water. If you need to enhance it, heat some ground coffee beans or tea in it. Or ferment some fruits or grains in it. Do we really need another colored powder to put in our water?
2. There is a big scandal in Fort Worth right now because a couple of high school baseball players "sacrificed" a couple of live chickens on the baseball field of their school in the hopes of ending a slump. I heard on today's local news that the story has gone national now, with PETA asking the school to use the incident in order to teach all the school's students about compassion for animals. Good thinking. My uncle used to own a farm with 150,000 chicks squeezed into a long, rectangular "coop." They often killed each other or trampled themselves because their lives were so miserable until they were sold to a guy who posed in a pilgrim's hat that slaughtered them for human consumption. While I don't approve what the baseball players did, and I don't know where those chickens came from, it was probably a more merciful end for the chickens. I am not a vegetarian, though I do consider it frequently. But my only visit to my uncle's chicken farm nearly cured me of that. Can we get some perspective?
3. There is a town north of Dallas that is called Plano. Like so many cities and communities right now, their city budget is going through tough times. There were announcements yesterday of cuts that truly upset some parents, who told news reporters that they chose to move to Plano because the schools were consistently scored very high. But I couldn't help feeling a sense of irony that the news kept taking the cameras into the office of the school superintendent, where there was a plaque with the letters "PISD" on a shelf above his desk. No wonder those parents were upset.
4. Do the people on the right really need James O'Keefe? Do they really take him seriously?
5. How did it work that the bible already had a convenient excuse for when Christians don't do what they claim to believe? (The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, etc.) My father, who was downright anti-Christian until his heart attack 20 years ago, has been a practicing baptist ever since. Yet he is full of hate and judgment, and has negative things to say about everyone who is different than him-liberals, gays, anyone of a "minority" ethnicity, etc. Pop, who tore the pages out of your bible that talk about loving your neighbor and your enemy and your brother? Oh wait, you can't stop sinning, no matter how hard you try, but that's ok-you have an out.. How convenient.
6. There 's a commercial about California that starts with one of the Kardashian sisters saying, "People have alot of misconceptions about California, but none of them are true." Really? Isn't that what makes them "misconceptions?"
7. My last question of this rant is this-what can America do? Every politician claims to want to help the middle class. But every policy enacted helps only the upper-upper-upper class; Wall Street and the defense industry. We have now entered a third war against an Islamic nation, and the president says it won't add to the national deficit. That should make the right happy-since the deficit is the only thing they care about. But yet, we are going through a tsunami of laying off teachers? Could the money we aren't spending on drones and smart bombs be used to pay teachers rather than increasing class sizes to 40? Mr. President, your banker friends do it all the time-move money from one set of books to another. That's how some presidents close their budget gaps-borrowing money from the social security fund. It looks like money just appeared where we needed it the most, and didn't cost us anything. But the appearance is that the government does not care one whit about people who work, and only coddles the very rich. I made a mistake on my taxes in 2006, and we may never be finished paying the IRS that $3,000. But I can think of 4 or 5 government officials who failed to pay taxes on hundreds of thousands of dollars of income, and they keep getting promoted. What if I stopped paying? I know that the taxpaying public would be providing me with room and board for a few years. Why? Where is fairness for the working class? I won't let that happen of course, because the taxpaying public is my peeps. Especially since giant corporations not only don't pay taxes, but some get billion dollar refunds.

This Could Get Personal

There is a field behind the apartment in which I live that I've taken walks in with my best friend, my dog, Abigail. I guess the last time we walked there was in late 2009, when I was unemployed, and we'd had some snow. So I put on my waterproof hiking boots, and we snuck across the fence that divides our complex for the safety of the children who live here, and walked through the brambles and rocks for hours. Since then, half that field has been mowed down, and is being changed into a road. It depresses me to look at it now, though the half nearest our place is still field, with a nice creek. Now and then we hear coyotes back there at night, and some of my neighbors say they've seen wild cats come from back there. Not surprising, we have plenty of rodents to keep them all fed.

After that walk I was telling my mother how much trash there was back there, and how many cans and shopping carts there were left there just to rot. No one seemed to be taking care of the field, or to even care about it-the creek was full of cans and other debris. My mother sucked in her breath in horror. "I don't think you should walk back there. There could be HOMELESS PEOPLE back there." Homeless people? As if homelessness alone makes someone dangerous.

 I don't fear people. I really don't. I do fear ignorance. I've seen and heard several remarks and articles about the percentage of homeless people who are mentally ill, and how the mental health system fails us-as shown by the apparently mentally ill man who shot a US congresswoman and 19 others at a public event last Saturday.

Does the mental health system fail patients, and sometimes the public? Yes. Just as the health care system in this country fails the sick, and often people die as a result. I think something should be changed; changed BIG and changed now. We could spend lots and lots of time arguing about what to change and how, but that is not  my purpose here.( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-shearer/why-so-many-mentally-ill_b_806725.html)

I have struggled with depression since I was a teenager. Twice it became so severe that I was hospitalized. I won't go into details, but I remember clearly that after the second hospitalization, I was working for someone that I still consider one of the best bosses I ever had. After a few days back in the office, during which I was only working half-days and attending groups the other half, I brought him a brochure from the hospital about how to work with people who have depression or mental illness. It was as if, after working together for nearly five years, he became completely afraid to be himself, or even talk to me for fear of throwing me into a nervous breakdown. And I guess that is understandable-most people don't understand mental illness, and don't know how to react to it. Movies and TV make it look pretty scary, and not quite realistic (who knew?)

Now, with all the talk about the people who have committed famous mass killings and have been mentally ill, such as the Tuscon, AZ shooter and the Virginia Tech shooter, I am worried.We do need to examine the way we work with the mentally ill. We need to understand why many of the mentally ill often stop taking the medications that keep them in balance-the side effects can be horrific, and in some cases permanent, doctors often must try many different drugs before finding one that helps, and it is very, very hard to find a job if one has been hospitalized for a mental illness, which could in some cases lead to the homelessness that sometimes attends mental illness.

Fear and ignorance can stoke hate and violence. And this is my fear; people are going to hear so much about some violent mentally ill, connected with statistics about how forty percent of the homeless are believed to be mentally ill, and the leap, whether logical or not, will be violence against the homeless.

Yes, we need to have a medical care system in this country that takes care of the sick-whether of body or mind. Yes, we need to discover the causes and cures for homelessness, and find solutions where we can. We do not need to stoke fear against the powerless.