Review: Leota's Garden by Francine Rivers

A resident here at Messiah Community gave me this book to read with the admonition that the first part of the book was very slow. I pounced on the book, putting Crazy Horse's biography to the side because I wanted to judge the slow chapters for myself. 

I dove in. The first chapter sets the scene. Professor Webster, close enough to Corban Solsek's proposed 'warehousing' scheme (well meaning bureaucracy) for the elderly, to smell the Ben Gay. He doesn't approve Corban's proposed paper. He does put Corban into a mood that does not bode well for his hoped for stellar grade, but he must give in and do what Professor Webster proposes -- interview a senior citizen. 

Corban does so with a chip on his shoulder. He calls and gets an appointment with Leota Reinhardt, an 84-year-old senior citizen who wants assistance with getting her groceries. Her sharp tone and demanding attitude do not sit well with Corban, whose nose is forced further out of joint when she proposes they walk to the market instead of riding comfortably in his car. Leota does not even want to look at the car let alone get in it, and so Corban and Leota walk the ten blocks to the local market. Leota nails Corban the moment she meets him as he wipes some of the grime from her windows to see inside her old home (built before the war, likely about 1920s). Leota nails him to the wall with her accurate assessment of Corban's offer to assist her. Nose thoroughly out of joint and the chip on his shoulder set firmer in place, they set off for the market where Leota choose her items and further sets Corban's mood deeper into the dumps.

What he has to do to get a passing grade to please Professor Webster us worse than breaking rocks on a chain gang. But Corban must get through his ordeal or risk flunking and thus not graduating.

Leota's house is in disrepair due to her increasingly limiting arthritis. Corban looks through the kitchen window and sees Leota's garden, which is as overgrown and ill kempt as the housekeeping inside the house. Corban wrinkles his nose, but will put up with his voltary task because he wants a good grade, and excellent grade. He digs in and faces the ordeal of assisting Leota in his one day a week voluntary chore. 

Leota has no family to speak of and Corban will follow through just as he planned. He needs to interview Leota, per Professor Webster's criteria, in order to get a passing grade on his proposal. He can endure anything -- even Leota's sharp-edged tongue and eagle eyes. She misses nothing and digs her spurs in with deadly accuracy. She knows Corban wants something from her or he wouldn't be here, and he is not pleased with the assignment. Obviously, he is not volunteering to aid her out of Christian charity.

Nearby, Anne-Lynn, Leota's granddaughter has surreptitiously left her mother's home. She WILL NOT go to Wellesley or any other acceptable college back east Her mother has driven her to excel and succeed, all the while spurring her on by watching everything Anne-Lynn does and digging in her spurs to help Anne-Lynn to succeed and be perfect. Anne-Lynn moves in with her friend, Susan Carter, a friend that Nora, her mother, is certain will seduce her daughter to take drugs and act irresponsibly with boys. Susan Carter is not Nora's idea of a good friend -- or even an acceptable acquaintance -- and Nora is sure Susan will lead her daughter down a dark road far from the perfect life she has suffered and worked to provide. How dare Anne-Lynn refuse her after all she has done and sacrificed to provide for her and her older brother, Michael? How dare she? Anne-Lynn must come to her senses and follow the path Nora has laid out for her, but Anne-Lynn is just like her mother, selfish, and ungrateful

Anne-Lynn moves in with Susan in her tiny, studio apartment, and enrolls in college, an arts college and not Berkley no less. Nora's nose is thoroughly out of joint. To make matters worse, Anne-Lynn snuck away in the middle of the night to move into Susan's apartment and has taken a job as a waitress where Susan works.

Into this very emotional and complicated set up, Francine Rivers weaves together a wonderful book with masterful writing and attention to detail. "Leota's Garden" is about the clash of families and the hopefully altruistic college students who want to help the elderly. Warehousing them and keeping them out of sight may be Corban's initial plan, but Professor Webster sees his plan as more interference that does not meet the needs of the poor and elderly. Not to mention that there is no hint at all of Corban's having met or conversed with the elderly to get their views on what he plans to do -- in the name of taking care of the elderly. It is certainly not a plan that Professor Webster wants to see landing on his head when (and if) it takes effect. 

What follows is Corban getting to know the elderly through his weekly chore of walking Leota to the grocery. The walk is long for a young, fit, mobile young man like Corban and must be tiring and trying on the elderly, barely mobile Leota, but she gets through the task with sheer guts and determination, and not a little sass and passion.

Anne-Lynn, denied of getting to know Leota, her grandmother, decides to meet and get to know her grandmother against Nora's high-minded (handed) wishes to find out why her mother dislikes Leota so much and why she is "just like her mother." What is so wrong with her grandmother? What is there about Anne-Lynn that is so reprehensible and exactly like her grandmother? What did her mother mean and why is her grandmother frivolous and selfish as her mother claims -- and has harangued Annie about endlessly for years?

Annie is a Christian and has decided that she must bring Leota to the Lord. Maybe Annie can help mend fences between her mother and her grandmother, build a bridge to span the decades-old differences that have put them at odds. Annie has faith in the Lord and faith in her belief in God.

Francine Rivers has penned a faith-based and centered book in "Leota's Garden" and has not gotten too heavy with the dogma or the language. It was Leota's prayer to just get it over with that got to me. It was so like my own when I was stuck in the hospital and the future was bleak and dark. My useful days were over and all I wanted to do was lie down and never get up again. Leota's prayer was so like mine and I felt her pain and her wish to be over with this life. When I said the same words out loud, the doctors thought I was suicidal and put me on an antidepressant. It was refreshing that people older than I am had the same feelings and didn't (and don't) wan to commit suicide, but dealing with the feeling that you've gotten to the end of the line is obviously pervasive.

Leota doesn't die. She comes alive when Annie comes to meet her and get to know more about her grandmother -- and herself. She perks up when she tells Annie unfolds their family for her. Annie is pleased when she finds out that she has a great aunt who was an artist just like she plans to be. She marvels at the beautiful work that Leota shows her and revels in coming from a family that is so talented and gifted, much like she is herself. She has the genes, but she will work hard and hone her gift.

"Leota's Garden" is full of family drama, good and bad, and doesn't dwell on the maudlin aspect of young people dealing with the elderly. The book shines with hope and brims with possibilities as Ms. Rivers's writing peels away the layers and lays the heart of the novel bare with finesse and loving kindness. I didn't think the first part of the book was slow, but Ms. Rivers does take time building the bones upon which this novel is fleshed. A marvelous novel that will stay with you as it stays with me, a gift of storytelling that does not rely too much on the Christian message or dive too deeply into depressing and maudlin circumstances. A shining example of modern literature. I give this novel 5 stars.

Not to be missed. Will stay with you long after you've finished reading. Definitely not to be missed. Share it with your family and your friends. This is a classic.

Acting OUT in haste

The evening before I left Colorado and came to Ohio, Megan told me I was in her sights and she was taking aim.

Better if she had done that when she hooked up with my eldest son, David Scott.

Of course, if she had, I would not have two beautiful and talented granddaughters, Addy and Tori. 

She forbid me to show up at her door or to see my granddaughters. She informed me that she stalked me for two years, not to let her girls get to know their paternal grandmother (that's me) but to let me know about her and my granddaughters.

She claimed she was not replacing the girls' real grandmother, her mother (and I don't dispute that and don't want to take aim at her at all. I like and respect her.) but informing me of Tori and Addy's existence.

Thank you, Megan. I have never disputed their existence and I enjoyed thoroughly getting to know the girls. I do not agree with your actions regarding me.

You have banished me from your life -- and the girls' lives -- without giving me a chance. You gave David Scott more chances than you gave me.

Yes, I should not have talked so plainly with Tori. I should not have acquainted her with David Scott's history since you have taken great pains to hide much of the truth from Victoria and Addison, and I have aided and abetted you with regard to that. Mea culpa. I did wrong.

I should have told them the WHOLE truth. I bowed to your wisdom in hiding from them the fact that David Scott had married Julie, the mother of his twins (and their half-brother and sister), Connor's death, and Sierra's adoption by her maternal grandparents. David has left a long trail of broken hearts and broken dreams in his wake that stretches from Ohio to Mexico and up the western coast of this country. You may tell the girls whatever you choose and I will stay silent and won't turn up on your doorstep to meet the girls face to face. That is your choice -- and I have honored that choice.

No longer.

I will not stay silent any more. I will see the girls -- and meet them. If you were prefer I do not, then go to court and get an official order -- a TRO, temporary restraining order. You may get a judge to agree with you and then you will have to renew the TRO every five years (if the TRO is granted) to keep me away. You will have stalled my toxic effect on the girls -- for the time being. You will not, however, get me arrested and thrown in jail for ignoring  your wishes and meeting MY GRANDDAUGHTERS. I think your mother would agree with me and that I have the right to see, meet, and get to know them without the distance between Ohio and Colorado since I am here IN OHIO and living in the state.

You may turn away and send back any letters I send and you have already unfriended me on Facebook. So be it.

Just a note, my siblings have cut me out of their lives too. I'm used to it. They have their views and opinions of me and I will not -- and cannot -- change their minds. It's rather like the endemic abuse suffered by women since Eve. I might even join the #metoo movement, not only for my own abuse by men and relatives, but by MEN since the beginning of time.

You have the right to refuse to see me, talk to me, or listen to me and I will respect YOUR rights, but you must respect MY rights.

I AM their paternal grandmother and I will speak the truth, the WHOLE TRUTH, whether you agree or not. I will no longer censor myself. I will be who I have always been and will always be. Keep that in mind.

I have been honest with you and now I'm going to be honest with Victoria and Addison. They need to know the truth, not the truth as you have told them, but the whole truth. I'm going to be honest with them. I won't lie to them or for you any more.

So go get your legal TRO and keep renewing it every 5 years as long as it is in force -- and while I am alive and a danger to you and your daughters. You might want to get another TRO for David Scott if he ever returns to Ohio and keep renewing that one every 5 years as long as he is a threat

Go on with your life. Get married. Move out of your mother's home and grow up. Be an adult. Be responsible for yourself and take responsibility for your life without using (and abusing) your mother's kindness and tolerance.

There are consequences to hasty actions and here they are in black and white. Don't blame others. Either tolerate them and accept their generosity or cut them out of their lives and take the consequences. Not everyone -- and that includes me -- agrees with your decisions or your actions. I don't agree with my sons' actions -- not even David Scott.

That is all. Disperse.

Should Kavanaugh Step Down?

The Supreme Court nominee is still under fire and many talking heads and reporters have made their opinions known.

I didn't listen to the process, but I did hear Blasey-Ford's testimony (part of it anyway). I do believe that she is sincere and that she was assaulted, but I am not down with her bringing up the alleged rape (only because I'm sticking to legalese) 36 years ago.

It seems that talking heads and politicians have had their say and they believe Kavanaugh is guilty of assaulting Ms. Blasey-Ford. And yet they confirmed Kavanaugh's appointment to the Supreme Court -- narrowly, but confirmed all the same.

In my estimation, Kavanaugh knows the truth of whether or not he is guilty or innocent, but he is not stepping down. He has stayed in the process and has taken the oath. This is not the 1700s. This is the 21st century and the mob is comfortable with the uniform gray that has infected our lives and our legal system.

I am not.

In my opinion, Kavanaugh should step down and let President Trump choose someone else for the Supreme Court, especially since the appointment is FOR LIFE. I doubt anyone Trump nominates will go down easily or be confirmed without political blood shed. Is it possible that the people and the politicians are comfortable with nominating or putting anyone who has ties to rape and/or sexual assault that reflect up the line, all the way to the top, the President of the United States (POTUS).

I am not.

With the #MeToo movement gaining momentum women are becoming more and more like the men who have assaulted them -- bullies. I am not down with that either.

I am not.

It is impossible to find a single male that is free of taint because this country -- and the entire world --  has been party to the degradation, humiliation, and shaming of women since Adam and Eve. It is endemic wherever women are and have been. No woman is free of the taint of scandal or abuse and women have been the focus of abuse since the beginning of time.

This is supposed to be the Enlightened Age and we are (or supposed to be) discerning adults. In this shining country on the hill, we should be free of the taint of abusing women and free of abuse of the poor and downtrodden, but we cannot free ourselves of the taint of millennia of abuse without owning up to our past and making adjustments that will impact the whole of the world, not when we make fun of abusing people -- all people -- and especially women -- in the wake of accepting responsibility and blame.

If Kavanaugh knows in his heart that he is guilty of what he has been accused by Blasey-Ford, he should recant his nomination and step down -- just as Justice Clarence Thomas.

It's time to clean house. Anyone in politics -- and in office -- should admit their wrongdoing and step down. Since the abuse has been millennia in the harming of women (joke and fact) accepting responsibility and coming clean will not be an easy process. It will be a full paradigm shift and full of casualties.

The pendulum swings both ways -- cutting all guilty throats.

That's one way to clear the field. Scorched -- or bloody -- Earth. No other way. There is not a single country, government, or administration that will not be scathed. Even Obama fought the Specter of Liar, Liar during his administration, and continues to suffer the gimlet-eyed spotlight. Neither Obama nor Clinton will own up to the truth, and we have not been able to force the issue -- until now.

The same goes for celebrating Columbus Day. Columbus did "discover" America. Whether or not he committed atrocities or spread disease throughout the peoples of America, he is still known as the European who discovered America. If we modern people are to divest him of his achievement, we must also vacate the land and give the land back to the indigenous people without a single glance backward.

It is easy to stop celebrating the colonial past. It is less easy to admit  we were wrong and move on. A major upheaval is in order when we divorce ourselves from the past and all we have gained -- much like expecting Kavanaugh to admit his sin without a trial and step down from his newly accepted post at the Supreme Court. I am asking the impossible -- so everyone will tell you, but I believe in the impossible and I also believe that people are at their souls good people. Or not if they choose to follow the path that led them to their present success and glory.

Maybe I am deluded, just as deluded as I am when I tell people who think punching others in the throat is a joke or acceptable. Then I must also be deluded when I expect perpetrators and predators to own up to their sins and take their medicine NOW and not decades later, even 36 or 500 years later.

We cannot accept the paradigm shift if we do not admit that WE WERE WRONG and make substantial reparations.

Let Blasey Ford prove her case in the halls of justice and put this incident behind her. Let Kavanaugh stand trial and face Blasey Ford and accept his punishment. There is no way to do so unless we recant the mindset that women are stupid, empty-headed, and victims that goes back to the beginning in the Garden of Eden. God, we are told, stationed angels with fiery swords barring the entrance to Eden, avenging angels who supposedly stand to this day, but I doubt God told the truth -- at least as far as admitting he lied about Eden and the facts about Eve and the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. God must not have been so all knowing and all powerful then, so why would we see him as omnipotent and omniscient now?

According to HIS WORD, the Bible, the Serpent (otherwise known as Satan, Lucifer, the Shining
One) finagled Eve's innocence and talked her into eating the fruit and then getting Adam to eat the fruit, though Adam knew it was wrong. God cursed Adam and Eve with death (in the fullness of time) and the serpent with being the prey of women for his sins.

I don't agree. Yes, women have taken the fall of Adam and Eve and born the brunt of their shame by being the natural prey to the world's men, the fruit of Adam and Eve's loins. I do not believe that.

I believe that the real sin was the Serpent having sex with Eve with the result of her getting pregnant. The result of that coupling was Cain. Adam was his avowed father, but God did make a difference in the treatment of Cain and Abel (the natural son of Adam and Eve when she fell pregnant after they coupled). Cain suffered God's mark upon him and was reviled and cast into the outer darkness. Another Lie. 

Why was Cain marked for his sin of killing Abel? Okay, there is the sin of murder on his soul, so why not put him to death? He was already condemned by God for Adam and Eve's transgression in the Garden of Eden, so why not put him to death by murdering him just as he murdered Abel?

No, Cain must be reviled by the whole world -- ALL people. That is why this omnipotent and omniscient god marked him and set him to move about the Earth where he found favor with a daughter from the village of people (daughter of the tribe of Men). The Men did not kill Cain because of the mark on his forehead, the symbol of his murder of his brother. Small price to pay from the omniscient and omnipotent god who failed to take Cain's life as forfeit for murdering his brother, Abel.

Had the omniscient (the all-knowing and all-seeing deity who didn't see this coming -- Cain's murder of Abel) and omnipotent (all powerful deity who was not powerful enough who saw this coming and didn't prevent it) Father of ALL mankind made a mistake? Not possible in an invisible and all powerful and all knowing deity -- at least from my point of view. So God lied either to cover up his incompetence or the Serpent's true actions in the Garden of Eden. Either way we believers must believe and have faith in a weak and powerless deity.

I don't agree.

Now you know why I am an atheist. I question ALL man made gods. A man-made god is not the Universal Creator so we do not have to follow their rules because an imperfect and impotent deity made the rules. We can only look to ourselves and follow the real rules, not rules made up and enforced by MEN (mankind).

The only rules are love each other and help out each other. So, love and treat others the way you wish to be treated. Basically, the Universal Creator wants us to love and help each other, in other words love your neighbor as you love yourself. All the other rules are empty come to that and easily manipulated and mistaken -- according to mankind's nature. We are born of Adam and Eve's actions -- whether you believe Adam got Eve pregnant with both Cain and Abel or if you realize that the Serpent got Eve pregnant and Adam got Eve pregnant with Abel and that God hadn't seen that coming and wasn't powerful enough to stop it or change it.

I guess God was busy elsewhere and didn't have the power to intervene in the Garden of Eden just as God was elsewhere when David saw his commander's wife bathing on the roof of their house and then sent Uriah, Bathsheba's husband, out to be killed in battle. God was evidently omniscient enough to know that David and Bathsheba would eventually have a son called Solomon who would be wise enough determine the mother of the infant two women were squabbling over.

If God needed Solomon to be born and he knew who his parents were, why not intervene and put David and Bathsheba together and not have her marry Uriah, thus preventing his eventual murder by David manipulating and plotting Uriah's murder?

It seems that God looks away when his favorites are put in difficult situations and end up sinning. Better to pay penance and suffer the death of innocents (like a gestating or just born infant) until the right one comes along to make things better and follow a more honest and straight path. Too bad God didn't see the Queen of Sheba coming or King Solomon's infatuation with her.

But you will mention that God gave mankind free will. Not so free when you get right down to it, especially when murder, betrayal, and breaking the LAW are concerned. Free will still has consequences and mankind is left to suffer for it.

I don't agree.

In my view, all man-made gods have feet of clay.  They are fallible and their LAWS can be manipulated -- by mankind.

I don't agree.

That is all. Disperse.

Glyphosate causes cancer?

Since I am retired (for now) and watch TV on occasion when I'm not putting together puzzles, doing laundry, and rectifying my physical strength, lawyers are advertising for people who work or have worked with Round Up and have been exposed to glyphosate. It probably is the frequent incidence of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Imagine that! I only mention this because I have been writing about the negative effect of glyphosate (sometimes misspelled) for over 2 years. Were you listening? Probably not. But I bet you're interested now that makers of Round Up have to pay millions (and even billions) to compensate the family of those people who have been impacted by the glyphosate because the Europeans have designated glyphosate a probably human carcinogen. I knew that over 2 years ago and said so loudly, writing frequently about glyphosate's negative effects.

When an amateur writer and reporter tells you about the problem, maybe you should listen. I often am ahead of the AMA and other corporations and businesses in pointing out the dangers. You will eventually read in the news that chemotherapy and radiation therapy are not helping cancer victims. I'll tell you as soon as I notice – and likely already have written about the dangers. Keep reading. You may find out first here when I notice and I have no compunction writing about it. Don't worry. I won't censor myself when it comes to my public views. You will see me as you choose to see me through the lenses of your own experience and background. You always do and have.

That is all. Disperse.

Food Is Medicine

Food is medicine -- or should be.

Actually food is medicine and should be viewed that way. I think that will be the title of my next book: FOOD IS MEDICINE. Maybe then food will be treated as it should have always been treated, as a commodity that has the power to kill or cure.

Evidently MOW considers chicken nuggets part of the vegetarian meal. They also think that corn is acceptable. It's not. Read up on zein and its links to health problems and digestion. Not at all is corn acceptable.

I guess maybe tomorrow when I call before 8:30 AM, I will get to talk to someone -- anyone -- who has the power to get me a vegetarian meal tray. So far, MOW has failed, even after me calling and talking to Bonetta (?). So much for her expertise and assurances. The drivers told me today that they were promised for a HOT LINE.

"It's really hot."

Not I'd say from his tone and manner. A lot cooler than their food trays, which were quite warm to touch.

So much for Meals On Wheels. There are meals and they do deliver, but MOW can't tell the difference between vegetarian and regular with the emphasis on lots of the WRONG foods. No wonder this nation is faced with an obesity crisis in the young and emaciated in the elderly.

I'm not THAT old, but I hope the homeless are treated better than I am living here in a senior residential community.

I'm not sure if fasting isn't the right route for me. I can fast and I can face a 30-day fast if I must -- and I must if this is the caliber of MOW.

No matter how many times I call, the staff has not met my needs. Gravy dumped on a big pile of potatoes dotted with a few flecks of what I presume is cheddar cheese. Maybe I'm being too cantankerous and uppity.

No. I haven't demanded they serve me with fat containing food with fresh veggies. All I have done is opted for a vegetarian meal, which today contained veggies AND MEAT coated in wheat. Not vegetarian at all, although it includes veggies (corn and potatoes). So much for Bonetta's personal touch. I'd rather she not touch anything, especially my VEGETARIAN meals.

Evidently Bonetta doesn't understand English. I was speaking English, so maybe English is her second language. Maybe she's from Africa. Somalia? We have plenty of Somali refugees here in Ohio, and in Franklin County where MOW is based.

I think the Kellogg brothers communicated more efficiently than MOW's Bonetta does. At least the Kellogg's advocated enemas three times a day. Good thing I don't -- and haven't -- required enemas three times a day. For all I know, Bonetta would put the tube for the rectum (entrance to the bowels) in my mouth, going the long way down to the colon by way of the digestive tract.

I'm of the belief that all schools should have experience with growing things, like their own food in a garden on the premises. Maybe then the lunch ladies wouldn't fall so far down on the job. Kids would get their hands dirty in the actual dirt and know what their food looks like before they have a tray slapped down in front of them with mashed potatoes drowned in chicken gravy and dotted sparsely with cheddar cheese before they peel and eat their GMO banana.

I remember when our carport in Panama often had a stalk full of ripening bananas hanging. I didn't know about GMOs and such, but I knew bananas grew on trees -- in fact the trees that could be seen in the jungle surrounding our four-plex home built over the carport.

Those were the days. We climbed guava trees and picked guavas (green and yellow - very ripe). We also climbed the coconut palms that also climbed high over the jungle, using a machete to cut down coconuts (ripe and very immature, so immature the coconut meat was a slurry of milk coconut meat that hadn't hardened and exuded the coconut milk). We ate immature coconuts with a spoon, scooping out the fresh, milky coconut meat that had not yet expressed the milk or hardened into coconut meat. The milk was fresher when the coconuts had matured more. When immature the coconut 'meat' contained fat and 'milk' and could be scooped up with a spoon. I loved those kinds of coconuts. They were delicious then.

I even prefer organic fresh coconut flour and oil. It doesn't taste at all fruity or coconutty. I prefer to cook with it too. No coconutty taste then either . . . unless their palates are more sensitive than mine.

Rather like eating a piece of "Skinny Me" chocolate mixed with strawberry. It doesn't smell like strawberries, so obviously does not have the strawberry scent mixed in. It's just made with real strawberries just like I used to pick when I went to farmer's field and picked my own berries.

I also learned how to make strawberry jam, which I donated to the unmarried bachelors living in the VOQ. I had a lot of visitors in those days. They took my homemade strawberry preserves and my Mason jelly jars and never returned either the strawberries or the jars. At least I had fed the bachelors living on base. I'll bet they never complained about my cooking (or jam making) or my intrusions (visitations) either. I didn't use too much sugar and let the fresh strawberries shine in the homemade preserves.

Maybe they would have complained when I made my first venison stew. I never stuck around to hear their comments, but I was often home when they visited and asked if I had any more of my strawberry preserves. That is the only time they returned the Mason jars -- to have them filled again.

I never begrudged them my cooking especially since my husband would go out for dinner when I was cooking. He often bought shrimp and chips instead of eating my venison stew or slathering homemade bread with my homemade strawberry jam. Go figure.

I know much more know and I live in the midst of a farming community. I can take the transport to the fields, pick my own strawberries (if I can find where they grow), and make preserves . . . if someone will give me some jelly jars. Any offers?

That is all. Disperse.

The Whoosh Effect

I keep getting attacked by coinminer.com. I don't know why since I have nothing of value to steal or use for gain. I was informed last night by Messenger that I needn't worry about relatives since I have been once again disowned. No problem. I realize that is what I should have said to my mom when she threatened to disown me if I accepted the offer, joined the Air Force, and went to the Academy to become a fighter pilot.

"Only tramps and whores get accepted to the military," Mom said.

I thought my life would be over and I would be cast adrift if I had accepted and gone to the Academy.

It has happened as I found out when I signed onto my tablet last night. I have been ousted from the family. I am out and without so much as a phone call or face-to-face confrontation. Mom seems to have been alone in the confrontation department. Of all the things Mom gave us, she didn't give any of her chutzpah to her children. Since I have been informed many times, I am not one of her children. I was adopted and therefore came from a different gene pool, the male side of the gene pool. I share many of Dad's traits--patience, bad blood since I don't come from an old, established eastern European family, and confrontational skills, not that Dad had a lot of confrontational skills. He didn't punish us unless Mom gave the okay or anybody got in between him and the TV when it was on and he was watching. No one got between Dad and the TV. Since I often watched with him (I prefer old movies and westerns like he did--and I still do) I never suffered the ignominy of getting in the way between Dad and the TV.

Since I've moved into this senior community, one that was found for me by a relative, I have spent time working puzzles, the 1000-piece variety. I have finished them all and been complimented on my work. I had a lot of time putting together puzzles since Mom and Dad worked puzzles which they framed and hung on the walls. Seems I have a gift for recognizing colors and patterns that holds up when doing jigsaw puzzles, even with their strange configuration in puzzle pieces. When you're forcibly retired (and without wheels) you have plenty of time to focus on puzzles.

At any rate, my Meals On Wheels delivery will hopefully arrive today having been informed that it is to be a vegetarian meal at last. I hope so. I can't stomach another senior meal with dry breast meat, desiccated beyond belief when all they need to do is cook the breast meat with the skin on and the bones intact to retain flavor and juiciness. Maybe I will call them and suggest it. No sense keeping the skin and bones to myself. Everyone who cooks can benefit from the knowledge.

Knowledge is wasted when it isn't shared, so I'm sharing. If you buy antibiotic infused, hormone riddled chicken keep that in mine. Skin on and bones intact. You can relieve the meat of both after you've cooked it. That goes even for mass produced meals for MOW (Meals On Wheels). I'm sure the recipients would be grateful. I sure will be if they take my advice.

Have to call shortly since I can only call before 8:30 AM in order to change my meal.

BRB.

Good thing I called. They still did not have it changed . . . until now. Bureaucracy! More problems and hoops to jump through, never ending, until you talk to someone. Leaving messages doesn't work, nor does talking to people until you get their name and spell out your own. At last.

Yes, it does matter when food is delivered, especially when it's not what you ordered, left a message about, and finally reached someone YOU could talk to.

We'll see when it gets here.

Yes, it matters how it is cooked. Not only delivered, but cooked. No more desiccated chicken breast, only vegetarian. I'll eschew the desiccated chicken breast and the peas with a single piece of mushroom, for a full vegetarian meal.

Surprised?

You shouldn't be. That's how I began to lose weight and change my dietary habits, thru vegetarianism.

Don't get me wrong. I still like meat, but I prefer meat that isn't full of hormones, antibiotics, and genetic manipulation. Just plain vegetables If you cannot ensure your meat is cage-free and can roam around at will eating bugs and such, opt for the vegetarian option. Vegetables are best -- when they are clean and organic. That is when veggies are healthiest and best to eat, clean and organic just like I used to get when I went out into my uncle's back yard where the garden was to pick and eat tomatoes still warm from the sun. I didn't do like Katharine Hepburn and eat corn right off the cob just after it was picked. In fact, as much as I love popcorn, I won't eat corn in any form. I can pick it out of the veggies being served and thrown down the garbage disposal as waste. Corn is not as benign as I once thought growing up. It is as full of GMOs and genetic manipulation as most of the food is today, which is also why I don't eat soy -- GMO all the way, not to mention girly hormones.

Soy is a plant that can be made into many things, like plastic and cloth as well as food, but unless you have been reared and raised on soy, it won't provide much nutritional benefit, except to hike your estrogen and I have been through menopause and have put estrogen behind me -- far behind me. Boys don't need the estrogen since they cannot mimic frogs and change genders with the addition of girly hormones. I have plenty of girly hormones growing up and am quite girly enough, but without the attention to dress, shoes, and purses. I prefer a more understated
appearance, although I went through a brief phase as a teen when I bought clothes, up-to-date clothes, not the middle-aged clothes my mother bought for me. It was either girly girlish or middle-aged style, never in between. Her choices for me were god awful or babified, neither of which was acceptable to me, so I smiled, said thank you, and accepted. I preferred the hand-me-downs from my cousins. They were better than store bought (if bought by my mother).

She had style and taste, but for my money it was all in her mouth. A case of eyes bigger than stomach so to speak. Her eyes were out of this world when it came to choosing clothes for me. I preferred it when she made my clothes and insisted on dressing me like my sister. We weren't twins and we weren't even close to the same size and appearance. I was nearly twice as tall as my sister. Dad dabbled and made us purses out of banana leaves. He was very creative. Mom? Not so much.

The banana leaf purses didn't hold up long, but they were stitched on the Singer sewing machine, the same sewing machine I was forbidden to touch. As if I could get my fingers beneath the footplate to get stabbed by the needle. I could stab myself, as I often did when using a sewing needle. I didn't have to get stabbed by a sewing needle on the Singer sewing machine.

I had to teach Mom how to sew a blind hem stitch and do invisible repairs. Good thing I used a hand sewing needle and could stab myself repeatedly by myself. Mom had trouble with zippers too. She often had me sit down and do a lapped zipper and then get up and away from the machine after I had demonstrated the technique when I was a teenager, and as an adult.

Mom couldn't cook, so Dad cooked the Thanksgiving turkey. Mom was better when it came to candied yams. She excelled with desserts, or side dishes that could double as desserts, like candied yams. Her potato and macaroni salad were great. Her scalloped corn and baked beans were either water or nearly burnt up. She had had her good days -- and her bad. But we ate them anyway. It was food come to that, and we seldom ignored food.

I had to learn not to ask for seconds, not even with salad and meat, or suffer the shame of "You don't really need more. You're fat enough already." Her words sent me crying from the room -- out of shame and public exposure.

Mom's way was the caress, followed by the swift, sharp shame attack.

"You would look better if you weren't so ______?"

During family dinners, my uncle came to my rescue. He saw me as beautiful and acceptable. Mom saw me as fat and grossly inappropriate, like asking for seconds of salad or vegetables or meat.

I even liked her baked beans whether they were runny or over cooked, not because they were well prepared, but because soupy meant the bacon was cooked enough to show the fat and overcooked because the bacon was crispy. You'd get used to the burned parts of the bacon. Good thing I was catholic in my enjoyment.

She would have been horrified if I had asked for meat with the fat still on it, lots of fat. I loved -- and still love -- fat; glistening when cooked and crispy around the edges when really cooked. Luscious! Good thing I'm fat adapted now after having gone keto for so long, although I discovered recently that I was eating too much watermelon. Oh, well. It's behind me now -- and not behind me, but fat in the past. My behind has been lost with the general weight loss that keto has provided me-- along with the constant urination that forces me to wear a diaper.

Yes, I wear a diaper. I have a full capacity bladder constantly filling with water from the fat cells breaking down. Fat cells are composed of water anyway, so all that guff about your weight loss being temporary since is water weight is crap. All fat loss is composed of water, which is what drives weight loss, and my incontinence of late, The weight loss that Bang and Crystal commented on when they visited yesterday was visible fat loss.

All that hype about water weight is just hype. What do you think fat is mn ade of? Water. So if a dietary advertiser touts users are losing fat not water, they're full of it. Fat is composed of water, which is why dieters are always going to the bathroom, to void, evacuate their fat cells. It's also what is behind that orange peel effect you get with excessive weight. That orange peel effect of cellulite is mostly water. That's what cellulite is composed of -- fat cells full of water. Yes, you will lose water weight AND you will lose fat because fat cells are full of water. That what you get when the "whoosh effect" kicks in and you really begin to look like you're losing weight, so much that friends and acquaintances notice. It is the WHOOSH effect that keto people talk about. Rapid weight loss through the whoosh effect -- when you have crested the plateau and the weight comes off. Water leaving the fat cells and being processed by your kidneys. It is also why there is no ammonia smell from your urine -- because it is water from the fat cells. So keep drinking water while you eat keto or while you diet. You have to keep the urine flowing -- the water leaving the fat cells.

At any rate, I am losing weight (water AND fat) and it shows. Ask Crystal and Bang. It may be why Tien, their son, kept hiding behind his hand -- because I didn't look like I did when I lived there in Columbus. Oh, well, he will get used to me again if his parents move out here to Urbana and away from the Somali influx where they live now. C'est la vie. Such is life.

Or it might be better to say c'est la guerre -- such is war, as in the war with fat and loss of water from the fat.

No worries. I will have to continue to wear the diaper as long as I keep losing weight, even when I'm on a vegetarian diet. I like veggies and veggies are good on a diet. Mom should have stopped worrying that I was asking for seconds on salad. Salads are made of veggies and I liked and still like veggies. The more the merrier.

If you add fat, more is better.

Past, present, and future

I'm on a new path. Can't get my drivers license until someone takes me to Stow to get a judge to release the warrant on my old license, same social security number, that has been on there for 16+ years. Even if I had changed and gotten a Colorado license, the warrant would have remained because I have the same social security number. Go figure.

My sister, Carol, Bessie the bullfrog as my grandfather nicknamed her, 'promised' to take me, but like all of her promises (visiting me, bringing me the dresser The Idiot (Jimmy) gave me, etc.) it was and is empty. I'm still waiting here in the senior community where I currently reside and among whose residents I am comfortably living--without that ride to Stow. An old boyfriend, Yogi, cannot get away from his current roommate because she is convinced he will leave her for me. Too bad she ignored my invitation to meet and claimed I was an unspoken wish (on Yogi's mind, but not on mine) to  leave her for me. I like Yogi, always have, but I will never live with him for the same reason I broke  up with him over 20 years ago -- he spread my personal business around to anyone who was with him. In essence, he put my business on the street and I was NOT down with that. I'll put it out there, but you cannot put it out there without my consent and without my knowledge. Not so strange come to that.

Carol claims I am on the outs with my remaining relatives (her, Tracy, and Jimmy) because of my mouth. She mentions nothing about using her mouth on me -- I told her about her double standard and that did not go down well with her as she continued to castigate me for my mouth and my choices.

I will admit I am sorry that Jimmy's "London girl" is dead. Dropped dead at the restaurant when she was with him and Carol (?) the day after Xmas in London. Jimmy doesn't think I'm sorry or grieved enough to suit him. Well, I knew she was a fake and a liar and said so openly. I guess you would say that was injudicious of me, but I wanted him to know Jess was a liar and would not move to the US to marry him. He told her not to lie to him any more. Oops! She lied to him about being a young, unmarried, tall leggy blonde without children when they met online. She was short, pudgy, and a Filipino who was married to a British citizen -- an earl in fact -- and had three children. Jimmy knew none of this. When he found out he forgave her and told her not to lie to him ever again. Ooops! She never mentioned that her husband was still alive and was dying of cancer when she had taken up with him. I'd say that was a big lie. She also lied about family Visa and getting it renewed so she couldn't come to the US to marry him, not to mention her husband was still alive. She could and did afford to renew the family Visa when her husband finally died, buy she neglected to mention that to Jimmy. So much for his forgiveness or her promise not to lie any more.

She remained in the UK and continued to lie to Jimmy. She blamed her mother for cautioning her not to mention her children or her marriage and I told her she needed to come clean. She did and that is where we were when Jimmy used his hard earned money to visit her once -- and sometimes twice -- a year. She had changed her tune and was 'stuck in Visa hell' again, but this time with her moving to the US and trouble with her change in status with the US INS. That was another lie, but Jimmy kept hoping they would be married and she would move to the US.

Hope is a big part of the con's game -- and Jess's game -- with Jimmy and the rest of the family. They believed that she would soon be here. In the meantime, Jimmy spent every year in the UK with Jess (and her family). Carol and Tracy believed Jess was being truthful and not lying any more. Jess might have been a good person, but she was a liar up to the end of her life when she dropped dead in the restaurant in London the day after Xmas.

Yes, I know you're not supposed to speak ill of the dead but I believe in telling the truth -- even if it hurts. Yes, I know that's why Jimmy doesn't believe I'm sorry for Jess dying -- and in such a memorable manner, but I am sorry she's dead. I wouldn't wish ill on her. I would've wished she had lived long enough to tell Jimmy she continued to lie and I knew it all the time. That won't happen, so I remain unforgiven and out of Jimmy's good graces. Oh, well. Them's the breaks.

He forgave someone he didn't know and had never met, but he won't forgive me because I clued him in. Maybe it's true that I should keep my mouth shut. It would make it easier on my friends (at least when they're telling lies and hedging their bets), but I have not changed. I've always been this way -- even when Mom was alive and calling me a liar. Jimmy, Carol, and Tracy have always known about me, but their Christian charity doesn't stretch to me. Oh, well.

I know Carol makes empty promises and I don't call her out on that. It's just one facet of her personality and I deal with it. My siblings obviously cannot deal with the honest fact that I am honest -- about everything. Hence, they will not forgive me. Oh well. Back to my life.

I continue to wait on Carol to bring me the dresser she promised me two, three months ago and going to Stow. I'll eventually get someone, probably Crystal, to take me to Stow to get the judge to release the warrant imposed on me 16+ years ago and get my drivers license by taking the exam at last. Carol insists I must get my drivers license back but that would require that she -- or someone else -- take me to Stow.

Well, since Crystal, Tien (her little boy), and Bang (her husband) came to visit me today, I will get to go to Stow with Crystal. Carol will claim I'm using Crystal, but Crystal visited me and when she asked if Carol had taken me to Stow, I told her no. Crystal will make time for me to go to Stow. I've told her it's a 3-hour drive, but Crystal has the time and I will go with her. That is the end of that -- finally.

I've also enrolled in college and will get my degree in graphic arts. I might even sneak in a course in literature and maybe take a double major. It's all grant funded and I will get what scholarships and grants that will fund my education to minimize the college debt. I think I can get a few grants and maybe a scholarship or two come to that. Yes, I am not taking my 'retirement' lying down.

I also want to work and I've called around. I have discovered I have more than medical transcription to offer in the end. I have insurance, secretarial skills, and so much more. I'll trot them out and use them to get back to work. I'm going to go to college part time and can afford to work. It will help when it comes time to pay off my college loans -- less if I can get more grants and a scholarship or three. (I know. Wishful thinking. If you don't wish then you don't get. I'm wishing but I'm also relying on my background and skills and that's not shabby at all.)

I've also decided that my artistic skills are not so shabby either. I do have the talent and I will practice my skills until I am as good (or better) than I once was. I realized that I didn't get to my previous level without all the years and hours of practice and I can do that again (practice I mean). I might even find out that my skill and talent haven't deserted me at all. I have the bonus of years of life and the wisdom and skills that come with long life. Not too shabby at all.

So, yes, I am what I have always been and I've added to the bottom line, just not the old bottom line with Yogi. He lied to me before and I'm not my brother. I won't forget that Yogi lied and put my business on the street, but I will forgive him and not forget the past, but use the past judiciously. I will ask no promise and I have already told him we are not going to pick up where we left off, except where our friendship is concerned. I will not repeat the past and I have learned from the past. He will not leave his current relationship (20+ years), especially not for me. His girlfriend must understand that -- even if she sees things a different way. Her actions do not inform my decisions. I am and have always been the same person. She would do well to remember that my relationship with Yogi is as a friend -- and ONLY a friend.

That is all. Go about your day and keep that in mind as well.

I have taken a break, but have not changed. My siblings should keep that in mind as well. I am as I have always been.

EDIT: Because of my very recent discussion with my sister, Carol, I have agreed to never mention her or her children, Jimmy or Jess, or Tracy and her relationships. Nothing I have said is untrue, but my family is intent on censoring me, so in view of my recent promise to my siblings, I am correcting my usual modus operendi and will not discuss my siblings or people associated with my siblings. Sorry, but I will bow to the pressure and allow myself to be censored.

Also, according to Carol, Jimmy's fiancee Jess died 2 days after Xmas and not the day after Xmas. My mistake. I got that wrong because I either misheard the date or was not told the date. Mea culpa. Mea culpa.

I will censor myself by not talking about my siblings or my dealings with them from this date on. I prefer not to be censored, but Carol views my writings as being hurtful to her and the rest of my family. If you want the unvarnished version, you will have to come visit and read my journals. I will allow that -- if you visit..

New venue

I am sitting here at my computer in a very different position. I have to come to the common room to get anything done because I had to move. My sisters wanted me in a cheaper costing apartment and so they shelved me in Urbana. It isn't easy for them to visit me regularly, but them's the breaks. Living in Ohio was a big change. I did it to see my grandchildren, except their mother put the kaibosh on that plan by refusing to let me see them.  In other words, I am living in central Ohio (didn't want to be here anyway) and have been through the mill (hospital and rehab) and I was not allowed to get out of rehab until I had a place to go. No to the place to go. One sister is recently remarried. The other sister took her daughter in (she's in drug rehab and must be monitored closely). The brother (I only have one) doesn't want to have me move in because he blames me for his fiancee's death. It happened in a restaurant on Dec. 26, 2017. She dropped dead in public, but he blames me because she died and was at odds with me. I was in Colorado at the time, but the rule is that since I didn't like her and had warned my brother about her over the past 10 years, and she didn't like me and had not forgiven me, I am to blame. So much for Christian charity. I think I prefer Islamic charity. Cut my head off and that cures all ills. Head off--dead--done.

It may be brutal, but it is final. No need for decades-long (or years long) enmity. Oh, well. Done is done. She's dead and I warned my brother she would not come to the USA (I had it from her originally).  Now she is dead and I'm no longer a threat. I think I'll keep future relations on the down-low to avoid future issues. If she doesn't talk to me and I don't ever meet her, there can never be an Had I waited to be accepted here at Messiah instead of waiting (I still waited) I could have moved in sooner and saved a few thousand in rehab charges. It would've been cheaper, but I would not have chosen such roommates and made new friends and enemies. I still have to go to court on my temporary restraining order on Aug. 15. I could avoid that by not going, but that would leave me open for further harassment and another court date for a civil protection order. My female roommate would consider that a win and I would still be targeted. I will go to court next month and get the 5-year protection anyway. Better to  be safe and not sorry or have to do it at another time. Well, she won't be pregnant then and slamming down the race card every time. I will go. Maybe she will fail to show and I'll get the 5-year protection order and save myself the trouble.

Either way, I'm screwed because I am here at Messiah among friendly and welcoming seniors. That is to the good. The very good.

Don't cry for me. I am somewhat independent and soon to be civilly protected. Hooray for me.

Review: Lies

I read this book with an open mind. I was gob smacked. That this could happen in the 21st century is perverted and wrong. Technology is a good thing -- or not. In Logan's world, technology is equated with laziness and getting their man. The teacher who is central to this scenario is thrown on the bonfire  and nearly loses his freedom.  

How would you react in this situation? Try to find the missing husband to clear yourself or turn yourself in to the police and wait for them to fashion a noose, put it around your neck, and drop you through the hole in the scaffold? That is what his attorney wants him to do and which he fails to do on every score. That is what makes Logan's book not only timely but all too real. 

The police and his boss at the school were more interested in Facebook and what they wanted him to do to protect their "face". At least the Japanese allowed you to commit hara kiri, kill yourself with your own hand, before you lose, and consequently they, lose face. Put your job/social status/and everyone else first. That is also what is so disturbing about this book. It looks like the bad guy is winning. 

Do not be disturbed. In the end, the bad guy loses in a surprising twist that pits a child against the oh-so-smart adults. Bravo! T. M. Logan has indeed put together a killer plot with a unlooked for surprise ending. If only the main protagonist had followed his first thought, the book would have been over sooner and would not have ended with such a kick in the head. 
 
I've not read anything else T. M. Logan has written, but I applus this first evidence of a ripping story.  I will look for his books in the future. I need something else as good to read. And I'm always reading.

Review: Believe Me

Claire wants a job, but she cannot legally work because she is a British citizen here in the U.S. without a green card. She has to live, to eat, to get from place to place. What will she do? 

Claire works for an attorney. She tries to get married men to cheat on their wives -- and they do, frequently. Her roommate's father is urging her roommate to ask more and more money from Claire to pay for the rent. Claire does her best. She uses her acting skills and a somewhat checkered past in acting to get the goods on philandering husbands. But then she hooks up with another woman who wants to know what her husband is up to and it all goes wrong. 

She was supposed to be the husband's type and she did get his attention in the bar where they met, but he didn't bite. He told Claire he was married and walked away. Problem is that Claire is attracted to him and his wife is convinced he is a serial killer. But she likes him no matter what  his wife says. Claire believes him and she is willing to get closer to him, which is what the police and the profiler want. Claire wants that too, not only because she will hopefully end up with the charismatic professor but because she can prove his murdered wife wrong and vindicate him. Or she will end up back in Britain without her acting career and out of the United States without her promised green card. 

"Believe Me" is a slow chase through the deep, dark recesses of the mind with no way out for law abiding Claire and no trophy when she crosses the line. It will be her life versus her acting career, both of which will end without roses, and soon if she cannot find the right path through the mind maze before her. 

Delaney juggles with the facts and the reality with finesse and sends Claire and the reader down a long, dark road that runs through the catacombs beneath Paris to come out with her life and the reader's satisfaction. Long and harrowing at times, but centers on Claire and the professor with a satisfying payoff in the end. `"Believe Me" reminded me of M. J. Rose but was definitely not a copycat book or in the same vein. Delaney writes with subtlety and not without Rose's passion, but ends with a good and different book. "Believe Me" was believable and just long enough to whet the reader's appetite for more, as well as giving enough history to interest the reader in other writers like Flaubert and his peers. With poetry like that which is quoted in "Believe Me" the age of reason was quite a bodice-ripping time.

Review: And Then I Am Gone by Mathias Freese

I worried when I told Mathias Freese I'd review another of his books. I thought I'd have to relieve the clear look at myself through the prose of the first book I reviewed, The i Tetralogy. The book was a trip through the Holocaust and I didn't like what I saw or felt. What caught me this time was the mention of Thoreau. I thought this book, And Then I Am Gone, would be his trip walking alongside Henry David Thoreau.

I was wrong again.

The book was somewhat jarring when he revealed that he enjoyed and looked forward to relations with his farm bred lady who had married him shortly before in Las Vegas, Nevada where he was a practicing psychologist and after the death of his wife. His second wife turned out to be a help when moving from Las Vegas to the house in the woods in the South where they had to make their new simpler life livable. Freese took a few walks around the place and knew what was going on in the latter years of his life far from his New York City borough beginnings where matriculated. His wife was an asset in deal with handymen, carpenters, and such and being in the South stoked his imagination as well as his libido. Evidently, the later years of life are not as devoid of the hormonal frenzy that welcomes us into the threshold of adulthood nor was adulthood with its schooling and training and living left behind with fond regrets and memories.

There are always some regrets and lots of memories in a long-lived life, but that is to be expected even of a secular Jewish teacher-cum-psychologist-cum-author using his life and memories for delving into the past and presenting his work in books. Where The i Tetralogy helped readers face that reality of the Holocaust, this current chapter in Freese's life will help him--and us, the readers--at least come to terms with what lies behind and what still lies ahead.

There are breakdowns and glitches in us that collect and collude with what lies ahead. Thoughts of Thoreau and his time at Walden Pond provide a touchstone, at least for the author, throughout and probably inform his thoughts and his history as it relates the differences and the commonalities of living in and among nature. I was surprised and a little taken aback by his sheer joy and pleasure with intercourse with his new, country-bred wife, but I always am one who looks away out of respect for the nature of such relations. That is my problem and not the author's or anyone else's. That is the way I was brought up and the way I have always been. I prefer reticence to re-enacting Tom's, or even Aladdin's, bold peering at what would be best left unglimpsed and unpeeped.

I was drawn by the mention of Thoreau living in his simple cabin in the woods around Walden Pond since I'd never read the book or much of Thoreau. Thoreau was a naturalist and a rich man's son who perfected the graphite pencil that I have used extensively while drawing and making notes during my continuous (it would seem) education, and there my actual knowledge ends. I never fell in love with Thoreau's solitary existence or his rambles about the woods near Walden's Pond, but I do retain the feeling of meandering among the woods, getting to know the denizens, and the peace and solitude of a simpler life.

I didn't get the sense that Freese's life in the woods was as carefree or as studied as Thoreau, but Freese, like me, although he has read Thoreau, strives to simplify life and make peace with his memories and life before his second marriage while the families of both mingle and get to know each other in this new place and different house were members of both families find their own paths over the hills and through the woods to the house where new memories will be made with future (and present) generations. Their simple home in the country will be fixed up to their tastes and standards, leaving the old behind and the new to be discovered, lived with, and made livable for their tenure and tastes.

Meanwhile, Thoreau will look on in spirit and find his own peace in his own way whichever way he will.

Review: The Glass Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg

Ceony Twill, the paper magician apprentice, made her master's heart out of paper and used his paper airplane to go after the heart his ex-wife, now an excisioner, cut out of his chest.

Time moves on and Ceony continues to face odds and dangerous people, one who is so intent on destroying her, they will blow up and destroy whoever happens to be close. Ceony, undaunted and willing to reach for any tool she can learn to use, including her best friend's glass magic, she also learns how to bond to other magic arts. With what she believes are two excisioners chasing her and having managed to successfully slip the "noose", Ceony faces two dangerous men with unknown powers and magic, willing to do what needs to be done to keep her master -- and her love -- intact. Walking through the chambers and anatomy of another's heart will change not only her goals, but her skills and her own heart.

It is outside the bounds of protocol and reason for an apprentice to fall in love with her master, but extraordinary circumstances call for unusual and even more extraordinary choices. Such is before Ceony and the magic world as she battles for her and her friend's lives and learns that nothing is impossible with determination, luck, and love.

Charlie N. Holmberg's magician series is not just a turn of the century fantasy, but so much more. in 1907, there is a great school of magic, and Ceony Twill gave up her cooking career, enrolled in the premier magic school, and finished far quicker than anyone in her class and in what she knows of the history of the magicians' arts and schooling. Ceony is working hard to finish her apprenticeship ahead of schedule even though she still must deal with her master's ex-wife and the excisioners traveling and terrorizing the countryside, and especially Magician Emery Thane for casting a spell on Lira, Emery's ex-wife. Grath Cobalt, one of Lira's gang of excisioners using blood magic to upset the well ordered magicians' school and training, is determined to force Ceony Twill to reverse the spell that stopped Lira, but did not utterly destroy her. Cobalt will, like Ceony when facing Lira and rescuing Emery's heart, do whatever it takes to free Lira from whatever the paper folding apprentice did to thwart Lira's vengeance on Emery.

Sound a bit convoluted and dangerous? Not for a glass magician who will have what he wants whatever the cost.

Grath is not an excisioner like Lira because he was already bonded to glass. Somehow, some way, he must break the bond in order to bond to blood magic and become an excisioner. That is where Ceony Twill comes into the picture.

Ceony confessed her love to Emery and doesn't know how Emery feels. She considers choosing another master, another discipline, but she is bound to paper and cannot, by all she knows, break the bond and does not want to start all over with another Folder magician who can train her. She also doesn't want to leave Emery. She loves him, though it is forbidden, and not even Delilah's master is going to have an easy task enforcing the rules.

Delilah, Ceony's best friend, is an apprentice glass magician and helps the Folder apprentice to understand and perform a little glass magic of her own. After all, she must save Emery again. Emery Thane is a formidable magician in his own right and has assisted the police in capturing excisioners before. Must have something to do with his ex-wife, whom he loved and married, becoming a practitioner of blood magic and revenging herself on him.

The duel of magics between Ceony and Grath reminds me of  rock, paper, and scissors which I played as a child. How does paper stand up to glass when the magician can go anywhere and see anyone whenever he chooses? Mirrors are made of glass and mirrors are all connected if only one has the magic and is willing to learn -- and to teach. All it takes is an agile mind and the will to do whatever it takes to cross boundaries and disciplines. That is what Grath has been willing to do ever since he met Lira and followed Lira's lead. What Grath can do Ceony will do as well. She will not be only a Folder for long.

Charlie N. Holmberg has created a world wherein magic is the most potent power and where villains as poisonous as Lord Voldemort are often more dangerous and patient -- to a point. As for me, I can hardly wait until June when The Master Magician is released.

Billed as YA, The Paper Magician and The Glass Magician, though they contain violence, the violence is perpetrated out of plain sight and not described in bloody, gory detail. Imagination is as potent as seeing the violence first hand and no less frightening or horrifying. In many ways, violence in the Magician series by Holmberg is the difference between dropping a boulder in a lake and hearing about the ripples and waves caused by someone else dropping said boulder from one's own hands. Not having a video replay of the violence doesn't lessen the impact for readers exposed to violence in the world where they live and learn.

The Glass Magician is a laudable continuation of the tale begun with The Paper Magician and will continue the game of rock, paper, and scissors people play when they are young and making choices. 4/5 stars for this leg of Holmberg's magical journey in my estimation. As readers will find, folding paper is as formidable as glass.

Soiled Doves

There was a time in the old wild west that Judge Roy Bean was the only law west of the Pecos. Judge Bean was a hard drinking, hard fighting, moral man who surrounded himself with gunfighters and soiled doves (dance hall girls). As the only law west of the Pecos, this violent, imprudent man finally settled down with one of the soiled doves, content to be the law who dispensed his brand of law without restrictions and living by his own code.

He hung rustlers and thieves, assassins, and disturbers of his peace without mercy, but at least by his views a moral man willing and able to clean up the wildest patch of the west. He cleaned up his patch and settled down with a saloon girl, one of the soiled doves, and wrested his dusty corner of the west from the criminals and the dregs of society.

The problem was the soiled doves. Where Sundays were days of leisure, usually after Saturday nights of drinking, fighting, playing cards, and the usual ruckus over who pulled what card from his sleeve, the soiled doves saw their town becoming citified and tame and began to insist on spending Sunday mornings listening to the parson preaching his sermon while they sang in the choir. The old rough and ready frontier town had become safer, filled with the good people of town wearing finer to Sunday service and dealing harshly with newcomers who were less refined Sunday go to meeting trollops. The newly refined ladies didn't see to the morals of newcomers to the saloon and the town who chose the less moral portion of their upstanding population to get rid of.

Judge Roy Bean had less luck with the moral and upstanding female population of town. He recognized his soiled doves, especially his own personal soiled dove, possessed of a prim and proper demeanor that followed with the change in the town's status and high-toned feminine population, as newly whitewashed doves who didn't take to the rough and ready life of a frontier town, especially when the frontier town got a brand new general store, stagecoach stop, and restaurants just like the establishments back East. He realized his happy bachelor days when he was the Only Law West of the Pecos were behind him and he must also change with the times. He had come up in the world, no longer the Law West of the Pecos when he couldn't even handle his own soiled dove who was now the last word West of the Pecos and the arbiter of taste and refinement now that her soiled past was behind her and she wore the finest clothes from back East, a lady who would be welcome in the best and wealthiest homes of the wealthy town matrons.

Judge Roy Bean was tied in eternal wedlock to a dove white as snow that couldn't remember back to the rough and wild old days and wouldn't own up to her past as the Madam of the town's biggest and best brothel. Mention of her past brought out the vapors and fainting as though she had been tarred and feathered with the tar and feathers that bedecked dance hall girls that failed to please the gunslingers, thieves, and highwaymen that once flocked to her saloon upon arriving in town. Heaven forfend anyone who mentioned the past in her hearing or whisper that the silver dagger she still kept in her corset was the sharpest and deadliest blade in the state.

With refinement came morals higher than the mangy cats tussling over the drunks they rolled in the
streets, passed out cold from too many drugged drinks, to pay for their drinks and dances. Passing out was no excuse for not paying the bill. There were two laws West of the Pecos, and Judge Roy Bean was kinder law. Judge Roy Bean would only hang you by the neck until you were dead. His wife, Madam Moustache, would empty your pockets and slit your gizzard when you failed to pay. Then Judge Roy Bean would arrest you for vagrancy when she'd emptied your pockets. The hangover in the morning was less painful than the fleecing and jail was quiet -- at least until you were sentenced to hang and then that short drop would put a kink in your gullet that lasted until the undertaker filled it with dirt after you were buried.

That's the thing about the wild west, it was wild until you made that short drop.

Today, in modern times, we don't have the Wild West and all the soiled doves are in church come Sunday morning where they warble their hearts out for God and where the memories begin when civilization arrives in Judge Roy Bean's town. Instead we have Democrats whose memories are even shorter than those of Judge Bean's soiled doves and just as full of righteous indignation if anyone has the gall to remember the wild west when they were the rowdiest and wildest dancehall girls West of the Pecos showing their garters and their frilly bottoms on stage at Madame Moustache's Brothel and Saloon.

The thing about whitewash is that with a good hand and a thick enough paint even Tom Sawyer can cover the worst of the dirt so that soiled doves can hide the past and refashion the edifice into a Sunday meeting house fit to entertain the best of the best from back East with nothing soiled showing even on the worst gullywasher day of the week, especially Sunday.

Of course, the Democrats have a lot worse to whitewash than rolling drunks and knocking out
unsuspecting cowhands and gunslingers. Their soiled past history settles into the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow laws, and eating two helpings of the shit pie the maid shat out that morning. Whitewash is good for everything, especially covering up all that soiled, shitty past. Give that whitewash and refinement  a little time and it will gleam like a ghost town in the noon day Texas sun.

That is all. Disperse. 

Borrowed Life

Ethan Hawke told his superior brother, genetically designed to be better than the godborn child of the might not live as long or have a perfectly strong and effective heart
same parents who chose a genetically perfect the second time around, one who wouldn't die of an imperfect heart, one who would use his genetically perfected DNA to rise to the top of the heap not by chance but by choice. And yet godchild's brother never bested him at swimming -- or caught him before he blasted off into space to live among the stars. He had dreamed of navigating the imperfect system on planet EARTH, studying space mechanics and working hard to perfect his imperfect body. In the end, even without the perfect genetically designed life, he made his dreams come true, not only with his hard work and dedication to his dream, but with a borrowed ladder, the designer DNA that wasn't good enough to earn international swimming star, Jerome Morrow, more than a silver medal at the Olympics. Second best in all the world, but the fault wasn't in his genetic profile. The fault lay in Jerome's actions that kept him from being the best in the world, gold medal swimming star, and in Jerome's entitled attitudes and over arching arrogance.

Relying on genetically designed DNA is one thing, but it all falls apart without the hard work and mental/emotional fortitude that can turn a faulty body with a fate chosen through determination -- or mother and utopia planned -- results. Unlike the valid Jerome Morrow who threw away his future with drink and sybaritic excess, Ethan Hawke, the borrowed ladder who focused his whole being, dreams, and hard work on the stars, disproved the efficacy of a system designed to improve on the lottery of love and caring for someone else. Once again, natural talents and gifts are no substitute for plans, schemes, and scientific promises. The best laid plans of mothers and men will always be undone by hard work versus entitlement and scientific design.

The same is true in the end. No matter how much Russian money and misguided rich girl dreams, the gods of hope and change will stand -- and fall -- when balancing on clay feet.

Here in the real world where Hollywood remains a dream factory and the reality is as tenuous as tinsel and the golden glitter on the Xmas tree, it is all garbage that will end in the after holiday bonfire or mingled with the trash of wrapping paper, tangled ribbons, and dried out fir tree twigs and branches accented with the detritus of too much eggnog and booze and sprinkled with cranberries and used condoms -- or cigars. Not even the gold and silver of shiny ornaments and tinsel can survive long after Xmas day or New Year's eve.

Actors may gain fame from their heartfelt portrayals of other people's dreams and visions of fictitious reality, but only while youth and energy last. It is unfortunate that youth and energy are limited commodities, especially when limited by entitlement and sybaritic excess. An actor can learn his lines, but exists only on the screen, captured digitally or on fragile celluloid, and is ephemeral at best. Even in real life memories remain as long as someone exerts the focus and concentration, often aided by photos where youth and energy were captured for a brief moment in time, and more than often undone when excess overrules the strength of the borrowed ladder -- or life.

You may have fond dreams polished and bright in memory and ultimately undone by the foul taste of fact and reality. One can live in a dream only so long as viewers are willing to lose themselves in the dark for as long as they can afford to keep the movie running and the film stock intact. Too bad for most the time runs out. Biology forces us all to bow to the results of drinking and eating so much. Inevitably, nature beckons and the call cannot be ignored long or urine and feces must be wiped and flushed down the plumbing or scraped and dried off before laundering out the clothing and linens. Oh, the ignominy of nature intruding where dreams and promises, once so bright and shiny and new, become just another layer in the landfill or ashes on the winds.

No matter who good the borrowed life and no matter how much money you throw at the fake, all is for naught in the end. The day after Xmas will dawn and the sun will come up after New Year's eve. Time marches on and so must shattered dreams no matter how long one believed Xmas and the party would last.

That is all. Disperse.

Free Will.

I've been castigated by people who are pro-transgender. I usually let them say whatever, even if it means calling me bigoted, prejudiced, and homophobic. That too is their right. I have my opinion and they have theirs and maybe the twain will never meet in the middle -- unless I break off the attack by not responding.

I take issue that LGBT proponents do not see the issue when I day transgender people step aside and let women have their say about being marginalized, ignored, assaulted, and told to step aside for some man who is finally getting his comeuppance and his dirty linen aired in the clear light of day. LGBT proponents tell me that transgender women are women too. I do not see transgender women that way. Transgender women have chosen to become women, they say. I say that is a lie. If transgender women have chosen to be women, then they would have been born women in the first place because that is what any woman did when she chose to incarnate in this life at this time, cried as the doctor smacked her on the bum to make her take her first breath as a kicking, screaming, living female baby.

LGBT proponents are deciding that even transgender women are women and chose to be women.

I hit the buzzer on that one.

If the LGBT proponents call foul on my view, let them do so. I was born a woman. I have prayed nightly as a young prepubescent girl to wake up as a boy. It never happened. I am a female. I was born a female. I have given birth to four male children. I am a female. I chose to be a female in this body at this time. I didn't choose to have surgery to have breast implants surgically inserted. If I'd chosen when I was eight years old to have something implanted it would have been a penis because to my very young mind it was the lack of a penis that put me in the nuisance category of life that gave my brother, five years younger than I, the privileges and benefits that I lacked by being born with a vagina.

No, I'm sorry. You don't get to become a woman simply because you agreed to have your penis excised, or split, scooped out, and refashioned into a vagina. I understand that your surgical choices were painful and you had to battle society for your choice, but how much of your choice is due to surgery and how much to the genetically modified food you have eaten that dumped estrogen into you body and how much due to the prestige of appearing to be a woman?

Bruce Jenner lived his whole life as a white male athlete until he chose to surgically alter his appearance to emerge as Caitlin Jenner. No, Bruce is not a hero.  No, Bruce is not a woman.  No, Bruce is not icon to be worshiped because he chose to have his penis excised, scooped out, and the remaining tissue turned inside out and be fashioned into a vagina. I applaud his willingness to undergo the pain, but I'm certain Bruce didn't stint on the narcotics to help him through the surgical pain. He chose the surgical pain since he didn't choose to become a woman before he incarnated as Bruce Jenner, male athlete.

I do tend to feel that biological males who choose to wear dresses and pretend to be women are as phony as drag queens smoothing on their stockings and filling their dresses with falsies or silicone implants are still like my younger brother who sometimes went out on Halloween dressed as a girl -- playing dress-up.

Try as they might, transgender females, whatever they chose to have done to appear female, do not understand or know what it's like to be a woman. Transgender women have not lived with the knowledge that no matter how smart, how talented, how savvy they are, they will remain marginalized because they were born women, shuffled to the back of the bus, and overshadowed, ignored, denied, and forced to be quiet no matter their station, ignored because they are after all only women -- or girls -- people not worth listening to because they are WOMEN and women are always emotional, cry at the drop of a hat, and not worth listening to unless they're on their backs.

No one ever faces that the reality of being born a female, a girl, a woman, a second-class citizen means the whole of humanity does not exist without having been born from between feminine thighs, nursed at feminine breasts, and told to sit down, shut up, and let the men talk.

The reason men have nipples is because they were born from tissue put together in a woman's body and for a brief time while chromosomes and genes differentiate and gender determined with the suppression of a second X chromosome and the addition of a Y chromosome that biologically determines whether the gestating entity is born a woman (XX) or a man (XY). Yes, sometimes the connections between the chromosomes and the genes get mixed up (XXY, XYY, XXYY, etc.) and the parents decide which gender the baby will be in the case of a hermaphrodite, choosing to rear the entity as male or female because the doctor cannot say for certain whether the hermaphroditic baby is more male or more female.

As the child grows up, being raised male or female doesn't really count in the societal view even if the being has a penis and (not clearly obvious) a vagina. The end result is parentage children no matter what the parent choose to be seen as. The scientific truth is the hermaphrodite fathers a child or births a child no matter what the parents and/or the doctor decided when they were born -- or shortly after.

But there are few hermaphrodites born and thus fewer cock-ups in determining the gender of the entity born.

No, the problematic issue comes up later when "scientists" genetically modify food that contains sufficient phyto-estrogen or phyto-androgen to mix things -- and people -- up.

It doesn't matter to scientists whether the societal tag is taken from the LGBT lexicon or not. They've muddied the hormonal waters sufficiently already. It's up to the surgeons to take it from there -- and the psychiatrists or psychologists to handle the transition mentally and the LGBT proponents will handle the politically correct language.

I chose to be incarnated (born) a female and have fought my entire life to follow the protocol laid down by my mother, a dictate I fought against with my mother the entirety of my life. No, I will not play dumb just to attract a man.

No, I will not give up my further education and step aside for my five years younger brother because he was born a privileged male.

No, I will not shut up and refuse to say what I wish because girls should not put themselves -- or their ideas -- forward.

No, I will not spend my life deferring to a man because he is a male just because I was born a girl.

No, I will welcome blacks and Asians and anyone into my house regardless of your views because it is MY house.

No, I will not be prejudiced and I will acknowledge that my ancestor was a slave fleeing his master because that is who I am and what I drew in the genetic lottery.

I will not shut up and sit down simply because you're an adult and I'm a child. I have thoughts of my own.

No, I will not give up my intelligence or stop questioning religion, politics, genetics, and life just because you say so.

I have opinions. I have rights. I have free will.

I choose to exercise my free will at my discretion and not at yours or your friends' or your children's or your narrow-minded pronouncements. I choose. I speak. I am.

That is all. Disperse.