"Pinkhoneysuckle," Television, And Radio

I have dreamt of the day when, finally, I can take my book, "Pinkhoneysuckle," to media which is apt to open up other media slots, so here we go this month of May -- May 21, Radio at Fox Network, Cincinnati, WXIX Studios, when Kathryn Raaker who is among the more complex interesting people with whom I have ever talked will have me on her program this Saturday the 18th, and then I will be back at these same studios to film her show which will take place, as we go in studio -- Make-up on and we should be filming for the 7PM show, just as my son and his family from Santa Monica are landing in Cincinnati from Los Angeles -- so I must remember to breath, "Breathe," they would say when the blood clots were killing off portions of my lungs; "Breathe," when they thought that I was dying, and, "Breathe," I still say to myself, for I learned Yoga breathing a long time ago;  For I am finally going to spread the message of my book all the way to Washington, D.C..

I think no less of being with Lee Hay on WVXU here in Cincinnati, her cool jazz  programs calm the tri-state, and her wonderful speaking voice will ask me to speak even more about how, "Pinkhoneysuckle," came about.  I must thank the many friends who supported me on Xanga as I wrote the book -- blogging to all of you, and some began to know it was a book, and some would wonder why I would then go back and erase chapter after chapter, for by late 2011, it was published -- But one October night the daggers of pain would drive in to my shoulders, and the voice from within me would tell my husband to call the 911 number, and I would go in to the birth mode after giving birth 5 times, and especially to bring my Mary in to this world, I would be knocked out the voice inside,  my consummate angel requesting, "Breathe," "Save your baby and to do this you must, "Breathe."

I have this mission of unfinished business, a job to do, and months of healing from the lung infarction and the clots, plus that I must live on anticoagulants for the rest of my life seems incredibly unfair.  I was never a smoker, and I know that homes with smoke are not good for me.  My main home is in California, San Francisco, and either San Francisco or New York City is apt to become the first smoke free city in the world!  I did not know why I would become as powerless as a smoker makes themselves willingly just because I had a genetic mutation, and then I had to, "Thank God," for I did not have the Beta Anti Alpha Trypsin horror where one's lungs just decide to harden, for their gene pool is even unluckier than mine, but I would see every patient who had this disorder when I was at Hospice, and my heart would ache for them, for many of them were non smokers like me.  Until one cannot breath, then one does not feel the panic that crushes your lungs, and then in a moment -- One does not know if they will ever have even the breathe to say, "Farewell."  I saw my husband that night, not wanting to call, for wasn't this just going to go away - and the answer would be, "No."  I was going to need ICU care for days, oxygen and rehabilitation for months, and I still get so tired that I am useless around the house, but I am tired from other things as well -- such as pain in my back or pain in my knees.  "We get so tired," The angels say, "But you said you wanted this," and now you are on girl -- After all of this time, "Pinkhoneysuckle," is about to be born to a nation.

It has been compared to, "The Grapes of Wrath," and my writing has a distinct flavor of Faulkner, not something which I set out to do, but it is the way which I write, for I want you to feel, to taste, to touch, and even to smell the moments.  I cannot claim the moments, for they were lived by so many farm families among The southern Appalachian poor, that I am severed in to all of them, and I do not know how to say where my life begins and ends -- Maybe it is the time when I begin awakening, and I know that I am a new person, but I am scratching my skin, and, "Do not tell me this is imagination," for it is so clearly all of the fibers woven in that are me, for the past cannot be buried.  I dealt with it as of late when The Franklin County library of Winchester, Tennessee, which never told any of us who lived in Huntland, Tennesse and in the same county back in the 1960s that the library was for us, and my brother told me the librarian had opted to take my book down -- A book, from a home girl:  First in Hollywood's 2012 Book Festival for mixed genre' called, "Wildcard," then Honorable Mention in San Francisco, California for Biographical and Autographical material, not to mention all of the media coming up and the signing at Joseph Beth; If you go to The Franklin County, Tennessee Library, you will probably not be able to get this book.

I even made this known to their, "Friends of The Winchester Library," and I got a note of about three words which said that they had no control over their library directress, to which I asked what their role is, since every, "Friends of anything," board that I have been on, and I have been on several -- We get to vote on anything and everything, for we do the fund raising.  I wish that I could tell you that it is because the book has some sexual content -- as it does, or that it is language related.  Here and there, where people spoke naughty words, I wrote those naughty words down, but I think it has a lot more to do with Huntland Tennessee poor girls were supposed to stop breathing and living if we moved away, because in Franklin County, there has always been a small realm which does not want the outside world to come in or to know of the yesterdays when children could go hungry if they did not belong to the right church.  "Who determines the right church?"  I do not know, but perhaps it could be the, "Library Directress."  God, I would learn, asked of us to come unto him in many ways, and he did not like gossips very much, and even when I was a young girl -- I was not great at gossip or casting stones,  for it was hard enough just to get through each passing day.

It does talk about how close kin actually hurt and shamed me as a young girl, and that hurt so much, but I would go out in to this world, and I would learn that the greater percentage of incest and molestation happens among family members.  My book would have warned young girls to tell someone, to speak the truth to someone they trusted, for now -- They can no longer call you a liar and stick you in a girl's home for the mentally ill or for girls who were going to have babies, even with girls who had criminal offenses.  I would like to go and talk to those girls at some of those homes in, "Tennessee," tell them my story of, "Pinkhoneysuckle," and help them to know they can get help now, and if someone threatens to break a stick over their back or whip them with a wire switch -- Then, they do not even have to go back in to that place where they are so afraid.  You have no idea how hard it has been to get my book out, to tell how homes and families were separated, because the call for work north to build cars and make steel, work in brickyards, and pack boxes for shipment was seen as a greater need than for farmers and share croppers to make it on their own.

Truth has always been the most difficult pill to swallow, and we are learning that lying at the highest levels of government are routine, especially around campaign promise time.  I really think it would be great fun for a party to establish itself for the ordinary people who live in my picturesque thoughts of little white houses which dot our land on the theme of, "A dollar in every hand, and a chicken in every pot," for it would be a lot more sane than lying about war and going off on whether communities should remove The Lord's Prayer etchedin to a court house wall in the 1800s.  We deface our monuments to separate church and state at times, and this is just not normal.  One thousand years from now when they look back at how weird looking we were before we grew cameras for eyes, and had inward plumbing which turns all of our human waste into a little ash which the robotic people roaming the earth then might have -- Then how will they know what we treasured, or will we all be buried in an atomic burst.  I do not know, and I cannot imagine, but truth is something which you can scratch over millions of times, but it will come forth in the light of day.

So, I am waving a banner of Thanksgiving, and I hope you will all check with The Franklin County Library in Winchester, Tennessee to see if my book, "Pinkhoneysuckle," is part of their collection -- They are on the internet; Look them up and call, but my brother said they took it down some days ago.  The sad part is that I love old friends there.  I love my few living relatives that I know, and my folks are buried just a ways down the road, but this is just how time passes, and sometimes, things do not change for the better, and my friends back there know that a lot of the book is fact.  To add some color and to not tell some stories as vividly as I might should have;  I made them a little softer -- Some of when I first learned about men, which I did not know most girls I knew about knew about men before they got out of highschool, but my friend, Betty Ruth Larkin, and I were the youngest in our class, and I tried to learn from college books, and medical books, but sometimes -- You just have to see or feel to believe, and sometimes nature is more powerful than that which keeps us pure, but is this not something young women should know?

Oh my God, I wish you could drive out of Winchester on highway 64 and watch the Appalachians begin their ascent from the south, and see the beautiful flowers on summer yards, the roses-- even where houses might be so damaged as to fall apart, you will find roses, dahlias, and four o'clocks, and the little church spires, each which shares weddings, farewells, homecomings, and welcome anyone come Sunday morning.  It is all so beautiful, and young people are staying.  The towns are growing, and a farmer's market is now open to bring the young in to have a little extra farm money.  There is so much which is beautiful, and there are places which are ugly, places where young people flew out of their cars drunk on graduation night from some years past, and that hurts a lot.  Yes, you should go there, and when I get back that way again, I think I will bring the Directress of The Library a dozen roses, because to decide a book which now has a national audience is not available must be a woman or a man who is extremely powerful, and I want to know her better.

I need to stop writing this blog, for I am forgetting, "Breathe, you want to save the baby." "Breathe," for you can get well again, and I do not have to be afraid anymore, because this is something which can heal.  Some of the wounds of, "Pinkhoneysuckle," are salt laden, and I cannot bear the pain from the tears of so long ago.

Blessings, Barbara

Barbara Everett Heintz, Author of, "Pinkhoneysuckle," Amazon, Kindle, Create Space -- Signing -- First week of June, Rookwood Commons, Cincinnati, Ohio -- or also noted as, Norwood, Ohio, Bookstore, Joseph Beth

Rose Petals--Aging Children -- A Letter

"Hello Mama," You would hear me say, and standing at the door, your hands resting on your arms, you would have waited hours for us, and every sound would be, "That must be them, " and finally, we would have made it back where you wanted to be -- near the main road, for you had lived away from people most of your life.  I am so sorry, for you must have been so lonely, and I could read it on your face like letters which came with each new wrinkle which formed so slowly on your face.  "Get out, get out!"  Your hands would be damp like due, and each of our children was going to get hugged no matter that you were waiting, that you were tired, and time after time each year someone would be on the way back to Middle Tennessee, but homecomings never got old, and you wanted us to fill the house with old friends or get out and, "Loafer," as you called it -- Just to get out and to go see people who you had not seen in a while, and if we did the right thing, we would have found something new and pretty to show off and to wear.

The grand kids would be sitting with a piece of cake bigger than the mountain before I could get my suit case out, and Daddy would accept the hugs, keep the dogs off, and you would tell us how we were going to get to rest in the next day when we knew full well that you got out in the kitchen and banged pans like cymbals, for when the sun came up, the morning work was supposed to get done, and folks who slept late were wasting the hours needed to get the house ready for the company and to have dinner on, and so year after year -- I would pull the covers over my head and hope to sleep just a little more, to wake up to the country morning, and then it would start again; "Slam", "Crash,,"  "Bang," and "Clang," until we would give in, get up, and then the day was off right for you.  You would have cooked the farm breakfast, the eggs, biscuit, and sausage, but you knew that I was going to settle for a piece of your coconut cake, so over coffee, then you would begin to get the news.

I know that you have been close by a few times the past couple of years, for you are watching over all of us, and you are thinking that we will spread dinner on the ground and smell all of your pretty flowers soon -- The happy times, your reunions, and I wish now that I had brought the kids more often, for how will they ever hear about your Mama living on an island in the middle of The Tennessee River and that she would come over to swap eggs and chicken for provisions for her Mama and her Dad.  Some called the place, Hiwassee, the Indian name for the place that had the grocery and the old village medicine people, and I cannot ever imagine an island that large considering The TVA came in their and flooded area after area to create lakes which would sometimes cover the big trees.  I need to know so much more about all of these things, for they are our legacy, and it was as if you never knew any of your mother's life, for she had some demonic need to persecute you and us, so just go figure Mama, and remember that she was a horrible, "Gossip," and she decided that you were the easiest to break down as you had baby after baby..  How could she have hurt you so much?  It just seems the way of things, that there is so much hurt, but I learned as you would learn that sometimes to those who inflict great pain -- Then they will not know when, but they will have loss, loss as deep as the well which touches the water where only darkness can go, for the water is a table and it runs and runs under the earth and on out to the sea.  I have known about the secret wells for as long as I can remember, for I read about them in the fairy tale books at school, and then I began to see traces of souls swirling, swirling in the dark.

"Yes, Mama," the pain has been terrible, but you always said that a big family was good, for some would break your heart, but some would soothe you like the warm quilts which you made before I was born.  We count on daughters, but to survive -- Then some we let got free, for we start dying too soon ourselves, and we can only hope that time will open eyes with blinders to what was the reality of their youth, so my friend Roberta told me to no longer pray to God for help but to let God know that it is bigger than me, the evil, the lie, and how it all came about, so I did just that this year, for I have some life to live as well; So I handed the hurt and the pain over to God and said, "Now she is yours, for I cannot help her," and she needs so badly to make her statement of hatred for the foolish men who sealed her fate the fault of something inside me.  She was my baby, and I loved her, but I have let her go, for I will not accept even a scant of her troubles that she chose brainless fools to give her first passion to.  She is now grown, and I know that some things just are not fixable, and perhaps I should have seen it coming, for she never could see the people who you became -- So I carry on.  Mary shares her love so fully, and she needs me more than I can even give, but I will go to Mary, and I will know what love is -- Abiding.  Mary had to find the wounded to care for, for she is a lot like me, and we three could hold hands out on Sand Mountain, and we could walk and talk on Decoration Day.

I felt you near me when I was sick, and I feel you near when I am in pain.  Karen and Matt sent me a beautiful bouquet, and in it are white roses, and I want to save the petals and bring them to you, for they will seep in to the ground, and you will know that I came home just to see you, ate some more coconut cake, and drank some coffee, and I am going to let those petals from white roses fall and flutter, seep their perfect scent and rejoice in you, in your sweet life, another thing which I could not fix -- For until I was too old to understand, I never knew that I could have you.  I would like to know more about the Partin man who you wanted to marry, whose letters your mother hid away until you were a bride at 16, and I just want to catch up with you to fly on clouds together, and maybe we can find Dad and a DQ, take a ride in the old blue 1956 Chevrolet, the one we were so proud of when we drove it home -- A fine car, the most beautiful car until Dad and you stepped out in that LTD.  What chatter there must have been on the mountain top when you drove up in that black LTD shining like the sun, and I can just feel the tongues of fire wagging, "Can't you Mama?"  "Thelma and Amos are just showing off with that fancy car, and they were not fancy back when we knew them, and they shore ain't fancy now!"  "Tongue Wagging,"  that was a good term for gossip, and I could just see a bunch of old mixed up dogs with their tongues hanging down their neck, smacking their lips, wanting to chew on a bone, because their mouths were so full of dead meat a dry bone sounded good after all that drizzle and drabble of old hen dogs yapping up a storm, "Thelma and Amos, and that bunch of kids -- Just a bunch of show offs."

You were better than them, because you would forgive and forget, and their minds, and their dark souls are going to be treading in that well where the water runs deep and dark, and there is no telling where the water ends.

I will be alright now, "Do you hear me?"  It is Mother's Day 2013, and I have cheated death twice, and I hope to bear this world a while longer.  I want to see more miracles, and I want to see the sun spin, and "Blessed Mary," to know that she is in every rose bud, for it is her sign, and it is pure and sweet like love, and like the beginning, the baby's head, the faint of human beings when they feel the need for love.  "Happy Mother's Day, Mama," and I will miss you every year, but as I told you, "This year was harder," for I know my own limits, and I know when I have to put some things away, for they just hurt too much -- Like the day we put you away in your royal blue gown, your hands with our pink roses, a picture of James, and all of your work done. I just know that your breath is on the springtime air, so I will tell you, "Good Night, Mama,"  and knowing you, your apt to be endeavoring to find life boats for those in the darkest wells.  They never knew that underneath it all you had a heart of gold -- And that can never be taken from you.

"Mother Mary, surround my mother's resting place with roses, and make certain she knows that Jacob left her flowers I sent for her special day.  I will write you another letter, and I will send it in whispers across the sky.  "We loved you Mama, and the best of us has come from the crystals which sparkle on the hour as the chandelier of new day is streaking always across the east, for no longer must you wait until sunset to rest."

A Prayer Letter For My Mother

Steak Down His Pants

Having been an RN, I know some things which I advise others not to do, and one would be to endeavor to write something which shows fore thought after having taken medication, medication which I keep needing because I still have not defeated the airplane respiratory system terminator which grabs me on all plane trips these days, and why do I not go to a physician?  I do not want to hear for the 2000th time that we are overly medicated with antibiotics, and time will cure this bug which has gone all over the map each week.  It has toured the lungs by way of the bronchial trees.  It has visited the little places like alveoli, and has knocked on the doors of air sacks which have long been dead from my father's cigarette smoke, the blebs, as I remember them to be.  Heading north, it has hit the esophagus, the trachea, and now it is sitting on the steps of the sinus and mucoid membranes of my head, going in for warm baths in the sinus cavities, and my tympanic membranes feel as if snakes are going to burst out of them at any minute.  I am miserable, absolutely miserable, and the only good part of the whole frickin' episode is that I am not hungry.  My eyes sting and burn from the pollen, and the nares simply shut off and send guards with, "Keep out signs."  This is how horrible I feel physically, I feel so horrible my mother came again in a day dream to make me coffee, the coffee with cream and sugar, and God knows what else she put in it, for she always had that belief that she could, "Burn a cold out of us."  I told you before that she has been coming and that is not correct, for Mama died many years ago now, but I will swear she is trying to take care of me.  I am going to send my physician in San Francisco an email, for I think it has about gone on long enough, so he can call something in.  Physicians and nurses do not like to seek treatment, so the past few years of having a lot of interaction with regular care just does not fit what I consider to be my independent nature, but I am throwing down the gauntlet since I do not have any of Mamas regular stuff to kill us or the germs, which ever succumbed to death first, so now you get to hear again.  I give up!  This sinner cannot heal her self, and that was another Biblical term which some folks I know do not get that it was a metaphor for the spiritual.  Alright Christian Science people are smart folks, and you can go in the reading rooms and have yourself a cup of coffee, but I do not believe you get the caffeine.

I think the highlight of this day though, was when on our news in Cincinnati which people still confuse with flying turkeys and WKRP, the old television faux Cincinnati, had as a news matter of the day that a gentleman had stuffed steaks down his pants at a nearby Kroger store.  I found this to be degrading, and if his name gets out, and it will, because they caught him red handed!  I was so disappointed that this station or any other station would carry this news, and were I not still under attack from the vectors just listed, then I would probably have laughed along with every one else.

Here are my thoughts.  There are so many men who feel morally as if they are carrying steak in their pants each day behind a nicely tailored zipper that it seems appropriate that this thief would figure a few steaks would hardly be noticed, considering we have the finest beef walking around town daily who emphasize or take pride in their great proportions and wealth.  Here was a man who probably has an arrest record already, for he was apt to be drunk or on drugs, and maybe he actually was hungry.  He was apt to have been a little unkempt to have been followed, and he is sighted stuffing steaks down the front of his trousers.  If he was a street person, those trousers probably carried other protein in the form of horrid little critters burrowed in his hair follicles, and who was ever going to take those steaks home after he put them where he did, and say, "Honey, get out the grill, for we're going to grill up some steaks this evening, and invite the neighbors, for we can stretch them a little!"  Worse, would the manager be saying, "Boys, there's nothing wrong with these babies, for the cops made a clean sweep, so put 'em back in the meat counter next to the A1," or perhaps I am giving too much credit to an owner who honestly felt repackaging and putting them in the older meat section was better than losing the sell of however many steaks our hardened criminal could shove in and look natural coming out of a store.

Would they have called the police in to arrest him had he chosen salami or hot dogs?  It is all beside the point to me, that I know stealing is wrong, but the man who shoves steaks down his pants has more problems than theft this society needs to take care of.  He was probably going to take the back to a homeless shelter and give his buddies a bite or two, or could he have been taking them home out of shame that he could not provide for his family.  I do not know, but what I see is the degradation of a person who is apt to be pretty down on his luck to be stealing like that, and could this store manager just not taken him aside and talked to him man to man and worked this out, telling him that he was giving him one chance, and put those in a bag, and I want you to remember that someone saw that you needed this day, and I am giving you a pass.

Stealing is wrong, and he was lucky not to be a poor Muslim where theft requires the hand that took something to be amputated among the under educated and hardened tribal groups where no one is going to get a pass, but we are a rich people.  This man has a family, or I would expect that he does, and should I feel every thief in a grocery store should be looked over -- In a case where it causes such shame to a person who has a family; I think there should be an accounting for the deed.  Work a day at the loading dock, or sweep up broken milk cartons, but when a person is found in such a sorrowful position -- Can we avoid making it everyone's business and making a broken human being even more broken.  It is cold in Cincinnati this day, but no one said he had a coat, and would it have made more sense to have used his coat as an implement for hiding his meal.  If he had no coat, did anyone offer him one, so here goes Pollyanna endeavoring to save the criminal, but I just cannot help it.

It is even apt to waste court time, but most of all;  Who was needing to be fed.  How do you not make his children feel lower than worms if he has any?  I do speak of victimless crimes, and this falls in that realm, and I can guarantee you that even if that man smelled like a dung heap, that had I been there, I would have begged to pay for his purchases and sent him along his way.  The damned steaks may have been expensive, but we are America, and we collect food for the needy.  We build altars for our dead, and I have been known to choose the best bananas, when you pull the two worst ones off a nice bunch and you want to make it right.  I think the store would have gotten a lot more good press had they just acknowledged that this seemed beyond the usual crime.  It wasn't like back in our old town of Winchester, Tennessee when Mr. Gus Larkin and folks noticed that a Gypsy family came in and spread all over the store, so no one could keep up with what all they were taking, because the Gypsy women were carrying babies, and everytime the managers endeavored to put down the commotion of theft, then the nursing Gypsy Moms would expose their whole breast then the store stockers and baggers felt too embarrassed to face the women, for around the parts where I  came from, a lot of people believe exposing breast is a fully private moment.

The story ended back at the old home store when news came that up around Tullahoma, pulling off the same crime, using breast to make gentle men and women feel they had to turn their heads;  Real store security nailed the criminal in the police kind of way and put their sorry asses in jail for absolute thievery.  Where will the story be tomorrow about our criminal and his sirloins or t bone steaks? My prayer is that if it winds up in court that Mr. Jeff Ruby or one of our other citizens who gives much back to the community will offer the judge money for the stolen and give the man a little work, just sweeping, catching frogs with fat legs for Mr. Ruby's restaurants, but would they just let this one go, let the man have his meat and let his family eat some too, because, for the dollars it cost,  I would argue that such a man needed more shame on his plate, nor does his family.  Sometimes, if their lives are too dysfunctional, then it can be a door to receive needed counseling, connections with food pantries, as well as an opportunity to be treated within the mental health facilities.  We can make a joke about every portion of the crime; "Was his meat solid or just half frozen," or, "How was he going to get out of the store without someone wanting to measure that thing??"    I can write humor in to dark places, and "Pinkhoneysuckle," the book uses every opportunity to keep people laughing through their tears -- So I will be the, "Kill Joy," who had to stop laughing, for I will find human stories which are just a little to sad to tell.

Our Bishop of Rome, had he been there, I believe Blessed Frances that the crime was not the stolen steaks; No, it is that we always leave our poor the scraps and  ground fatty ground meat from more cows than we can imagine.  He would not only have paid the man's debt, but he would have seen a need and filled it.  We are all capable of doing pastoral work, of letting our hearts to be wide enough that no one should be hungry.  Please do not go out and shop lift any thing this day, because you hope a person of faith will endeavor to rescue you, for I only wish to make the point that sometimes the need overwhelms the bottom line.  In the book, "Angela's Ashes," there was a chapter about a Christmas when the whole family had no more way to make any food, so that Christmas Eve, the butcher showing how generous he was managed to find a sheep's head to give the family, and they sat around as the mother tried to cook what was a disgusting sheep's head, and sees her children endeavoring to find some marrow in the bones, for any good part had been cut away, and that Christmas was just among the most hurtful, for there was no work, and what the butcher gave to them was fit for a couple rogue dogs,  Was this a gracious act from a kind butcher, I asked myself, and I realized what a lout the butcher was, that he knew he was going home to feast while a family without would almost choke on pieces which came from the pathetic sheep's head. Remember such examples and let us not only give of ourselves but to give our best, not missing the chance to offer our forgiveness when appropriate and our best when needed  This day, may we seek to protect those who are shamed. 

Good Night from my partially open brain. I will clean up the blog when the critters I am coping with march on to another guest of,  "The Friendly Skies.!!!

Barb

Barbara Everett Heintz, "Pinkhoneysuckle," my book can be found on Amazon, Create Space, and Kindle

"It's Not My Sons Who Killed"

I hear that message so many times when we are watching news about gang killings when evening news comes on, and, sadly, in America, it is usually a poor mother whose child has had little education and certainly has not traveled the world.  The police will have found the guns which may have gone through a home closed up for the night; and we have all witnessed as the police are being filmed measuring off the murder sites.  A person had to shoot to be initiated, or a young man -- Most often, young men -- has to get back for an opposing gang member had their eye on his honey of the day, and as unbelievable as that sounds, it happens in almost every American city where it is though a good year keeps it below that hundred mark of dead.  I have seen drugged out mothers weaving and weeping, "Oh my baby is not guilty," and the people around her cry loudly, shout at police -- Not always without cause, but there are too many times when they have shot, a neighborhood child is killed, a baby, a beautiful girl, and not even a mom who is a junkie wants to hear that her child has killed and lost the rest of his manhood to federal or state prisons where they adapt and life lives which are always dangerous, always without, and they will never really grow a lot in their minds beyond what years they got to be young.

I can feel them, for I had three boys,y and I love each of them to the point I would give my life, for we all would do just that, all of us who got the death warning first;  We would want it to be us and not our child.  I believe the junkie mama, and I believe the mother who worked all day, and came home to a fatherless house made dinner, then endeavors to help what she can to find school clothes for tomorrow.  " God, " Do you hear me, for I want you to know that we are mourning every son and daughter whether lost as American Warriors on foreign soil, and we grieve for those children who felt so desperate that they take their own lives and, only if you are lucky, do they leave you a note about what drove them to that point.  I do not want to give up my grown up sons, my daughters, my grandchildren.  Some, I may think needs a few hours with my Dad to do one day of work with him to just imagine the cost of why they are so lucky, but mothers will not turn the hungry child away, and the one who thirst is welcomed back in if there is a way to resolve the thirst.  We are mammals, and we nurse our young when possible.  We react when a little sniveling brut endeavors to hurt them.  One Halloween when some brat kids below us on the hill pushed my Matthew and his friend down and hurt them as well as their candy was all taken, so I loaded the kids up in my VW bug at the time, and I was so incensed that Halloween candy would be taken from five year olds, and I was so tired after doing a double shift at the hospital that I was going after those little bastards who made our baby's bleed, and when the boys asked me what I was going to do when I found them, I said, "I am going to run over them!"  "God spoke," the children in the back seat at least, and I was told, "Mama, you can't run over those big boys, and then I figured it would be alright just to find them and pick up one big stick and whack them across the rear a few times, but again, "God called,"  Mama those boys could have knives, we've got some candy at home.  We start early endeavoring to rescue our children, we mothers, and for some the rescue will not me made. 

The neighbors got the news, so dear Mary Beasley went around and by the time we got home two new sacks of candy appeared, and through the years, there did remain that the Heintz house always has food, but if you are going to try to steal something; "Mrs. Heintz might make you loathe the day you were born."  I just so adamantly have feelings about what is wrong and what is right, and I endeavored to use everything from the poets to scripture to give our children a wonderful life, but I got cut down really hard, for one of my boys got into drugs beginning with a 30 year old tramp who rewarded growing boys with what they discover better than any bag of candy.  She was using kids to support her own habit, and I will say that at a critical moment, she helped us find a missing child.  He would grow older, keep screwing up, and one day we would go in and the family therapist sent him out of the room and gave us this news, "Mr. and Mrs. Heintz, your child is a moderate to severe drug addict, and you need to get him in in patient care before it is fully too late.  "You have got to be kidding, our son on drugs; No, not our son," said I, and in those days we took inheritance money and sent him to Minnesota to the Wilson Center where he would later brag that he got better drugs. and he came out worse than he went in.  There is a happy end to this story, for when he wound up with a daughter -- His life took a sudden turn, and from then to now, he is one of my lawyers sons, a shining light in his community, and his home and his wife are wonderful places to be.  It was my child though, the one I was in disbelief, but it would take another five years for it all to work through the horrors, and my heart felt like stone every day.  How very full of myself I was to believe that I raised all perfect children.  But the denial I had was no less than every Mom I think of who has gone through broken times.

"Good sense,"  Can we look today at a woman whose son is living in The United States and who has a 19 year old boy at Beth-Israel Hospital in Boston if I remember correctly, and today she was coming to be at the bedside of her boy who 8 months ago was a wonderful student, but something terrible happened.  He had an older brother who obviously had gone back to Russia and had come back with news for his little brother, that showed us to be at war with Islam, we Americans, the Infidel to all that is Holy to so many different tribes of Islam.  In their heads, we are there to kill the law of Mohammed and all of the governing law of the Quran, and far more in the culture this boy comes from is the construct elders have in power over their children, so a 26 year old man decided to destroy his brother, to make him a martyr, and he knew the promise from his elders that then with his brother they would be in Heaven, virgins and bliss, peace from this earthly life, and probably picturing proud parents that they would die from such a cause of punishing America once more by taking down another symbol of something which seemed pleasant, simple, for the wounded, for the rich, and for the poor, all people along a 26 mile stretch of Boston would have the wind, their joy, three lives, plus another critically wounded from home made bombs -- Just like the ones which have maimed our service men and women so severely and The Boston Marathon would never be without a need for remembering those who died from here after in a war on our streets.

I see the picture of that boy still living,, and I know that is life is in as much as over, for some living find comfort in this -- That he may never talk again, that he will never be a good student again, that falling in love is useless for him, and he will certainly not get extra cosmetic surgery to  build a new esophagus, for people will want to see wounds.  I am aware that most of you see him as only a free will activist for a sorry Imman who taught a miserable message of hate, but I have been sick, watching much TV, far more than I usually watch, but I felt a familiar pain today and tonight.  A beautiful mother in a scarf so brilliant that I could not define if it was yellow or golden, but it looked like it was spun by moon Gods.  She walked along, the reporters chasing her, and she answers over and over again, "I am Mother, and a Mother knows,"  these are not my sons!"

I wanted the reporters to get away from her while she believes, "These are not my sons," and she will be chased every where she goes for every detail about how she raised such monsters.  On arrival in America, she will see her baby boy who can no longer speak, and the body of her other son will not give her the peace of a Holy Burial, for the time has paced, and every mark on him will be there for the parents to identify,  and then, only then will she break and fall, weep the mourning which is a wail, a cry for mercy for her one living boy; and she will say, "You have killed my sons,"  and the hate will be intensified by every member of her family still in their village -- "Those dogs, the Americans have killed our good boys," and then vengeance will be sought; we know not where or when.  I wish that I could ease this mother's pain, for it will not make sense when she sees that one child died, and the other was a follower of his brother, so hate it plants its seeds.  They ruminate, and there springs forth the line of death. Vengance and violence will go to ever warren where those who believe we are the Infidel walks.  It is over their heads and in their minds, and I feel like laying a memorial somewhere to a foolish child who was taken over by his brother, a boy who once loved school, and he would have been an exemplary student had not all of this happened.

Time, and the families of the people who died and who are wounded will watch the law try this boy who was a foolish follower.  I just wonder when are we going to start our fighting in another way.  I thought the mother was beautiful, and she was well spoken, so who will comfort her.  Could she be treated as humanely as any other broken hearted mother; And can we show the world that we are somehow better than people who must hide behind secret codes and home made bombs.  Can we feel sorrow that she will finally have to admit that her sons are now both, as much as dead.  I think the day is coming when we, of our own free will are going to need to show that we know this woman raised sons to do better things, to become productive people,  so I will pray for her family, though so many would say that I am committing a horrible deed.  I see the little 8 year old boy who died, the fresh faced  beautiful women who had to be laid to their rest, and for all of those with shratnel wounds over their bodies, I want to love and bless them.  I will send to The Red Cross, but I think we may be on to something if the women who are Muslim begin to help cross a bridge no man or men can build.

"I am mother," she said, so could we please know that she hurts like the poor women of Oakland and Chicago where gangs are rampant.  It is time to meet the women, even the Muslim women in our own communities.  I am confessing here on Xanga, that I feel anxious around Muslims in groups, and I have a very difficult time just saying, "Hello."   It all sounds as if I want to play nice on the play ground, but this is not play ground, for we are trying our showing our Warrior Spirit, and some will remain on the sands of deserts where there was little that remained -- So places of burial are sacred, and we feel humbled as we lay flowers for the warriors.  I just think that this woman, the mother of the two bombers deserves compassion -- And we need to let that compassion  begin to take root and to spread the news to the killers that their Mothers, and it may not be a birth mother, and it may only be  a father, but if evil is to leave our land of plenty,  that we have a golden opportunity to show that we are not blood thirsty Viillans .  Please let President Obama meet this woman and give her his condolences, for we have used the guns and bombs, so it is time to let the women know the American Spirit.  I long for the day when you, like me can look out over this land of ours and live the incredible moments when soldiers are state side, helping to save cities which are flooding and going in to gang land as adjunct to our needy police forces.

I am so sorry for you, the mother who will see her wounded child and lay her head on his chest where she will hear the same heart beat which she heard before he was born.  Just leave her alone our American press corps.  Leave her alone you who are so angry, and let her deal with the pain of lost children, for she is simply their, "Mother," and one whose life has changed forever.  We have no reason to punish her.  "Take care of all who grieve Dear Lord," and let us begin chipping away the mountain of hate.  I beg for such grace."   Barbara Everett Heintz, Author of, 'Pinkhoneysuckle," See reviews on Amazon, and thank you for stopping by this day.

Thanks For Giving My Book Positive Feedback

Old friends may get tired of reading this, but there are things we must do in life, and I take some time each month or so to say, "Thank you," to the Xanga friends who have ordered my book.  I will repeat that, "Pinkhoneysuckle," has been seen my many to be the untold story which should have been on all of the front pages of newspapers almost 60 years ago.  The Diaspora and removal of the southern Appalachian farm families from their garden to table way of life -- Our propensity to waste nothing, our strange custom of not turning in our neighbors -- Even if their living was moonshine all came together in, "Pinkhoneysuckle," my book which is a story of one child who becomes a woman during this time period of the early 1950s when, "Making a living," was dependent on an entire family's willingness to forego worldly goods to endeavor to be as fully independent of what needed to be bought at a store as little as possible.  We were the original organic farmers, and I was three years old when we had our first electricity in our house.

From the top of Sand Mountain, the southern most tip of America's longest walking trail which goes all the way to coastal Maine, we were the hidden people with our own religious preferences, and our public schools which always was mixed with religion and patriotism, for each class room was either going to have a picture of Presidents, Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln and a Holy Bible even if someone brought it back from a motel.  We learned scripture, and we learned Shakespeare, for memorization was still a valued lesson.  When people suffered a fire, all women gathered at the local churches and started quilting, for nothing, absolutely nothing went to waste.  Rags became quilts of many colors to give to families who lost everything.  Most of us only knew, "Home Cooking," and we would pick other people's cotton to make enough money to buy our school shoes and a couple of dresses, and if people sent over a box of someone's out grown clothes, I can earnestly say that we simply wept to find something we could wear.

Once a year our mother made an order from the Sears and Roebuck catalog, and in that order, she would try to get us all some under clothes, and bless her heart, if she ordered herself a dress, that dress would be worn until it was thread bare.  Our mother lacked the skills of many women of knitting and sewing, though she would try her best.  We did not own a pair of gloves or a hat for winter, and if we had a coat -- Then we were lucky, for it was passed down from someone.  Our lives were not even as modern as the Amish who had not moved that far south then.  I think we felt our most poor when winter came along, for Tennessee is a  Mid-Atlantic state where we moved, and it could get colder than out on Sand Mountain where we left the heart of our family.  We were encouraged to move by an Uncle, my mother's brother who had no intention of moving us for a better life, for what he saw in us was a bunch of farm hands, and I bother to explain all of this to you to endeavor to explain that we lived in an almost less than 3rd world environment.

My book gives you the phases of poverty which have not been taught to you from any text book.  It is hard for you to understand that while The Civil Rights movement was going on, that thousands of us in the farmlands deep off the main roads had been selected to be modern day slaves, but white kids like us did not get their pictures taken for National Geographic or Life Magazine, for it was not intended for you to know that an entire population of people were being used by those who had the larger crops.  I definitely had my own cotton sack by the age of five years, and when I was about eleven or so, I could pack a sack of cotton so full that when it was time to empty our sacks, I once with grit and my knee hoisted a bag of cotton which weighed 90 pounds, more than I weighed, but I really needed some new school clothes.  Kind people paid you four dollars for one hundred pounds picked in a day, but people would keep lowering it, and there were times it would be only two dollars, and Uncle Ralph announced that we were family, so we were not getting any pay at Granny's farm.  We did not get to go in and eat with the cousins, for being called, "The Bunch," Uncle Ralph would go to the store and start handing out tins of beanie wieners and some meat sticks which I read what was in them off the side and would try to choke them down knowing that I was eating trash meat with beef heart and brains in it.  My sisters had taught me to read playing with their school books.  We got one cola, and maybe he would give us some twinkies while the others were in having chicken, ham and vegetables, to when this Uncle died, I knew God ran him off the road as he drove back with a load of cows from Alabama.

"Pinkhoneysuckle," though is going to show you how the government with their, "Pay not to plant," money did not come near making a crop's worth, so almost over night, men losing their homes, for no mortgage could be paid, found any old car that was running and went north, thousands and thousands, and they would find cheap rooms or a filthy apartment on a known flood plain, and many -- Like my Dad would do that for 6 years, shoveling straw at The Tuthill Brickyard, coming home when he could, and we kids and Mama were left to run the farm with my 15 year old brother to plow and do the wood hauling by himself -- so one year of that, and he left too.  Mother began to lose her mind, so the violence became more.  She was out of control, and all of the neighbors knew it, but maybe they thought the screams were play.  Mrs. Hannah, our angel, told us, "I hear you little children crying back there," and she was worried.  The county could have taken us, but we would have wound up back in houses of aunts and uncles who worked us to death, so we hid as much hurt as we could

All of you thought we were a bunch of coal minors, now did you not?  No, we were farm kids, and adults too soon, for we were broken in every way possible; But our Daddy told us we were going to get an education, and when he was around, the books came out.  Our problem was paper, for a lot of time we could not afford paper, and our folks did not know about the big packs you could buy up town, so we would erase a lesson to do another one for the next day.  I do not care if you believe that any of this was going on, but Dr. Martin Luther King traveled around and he saw we cotton picking kids, and he wanted us as part of the marches on Washington, but the NAACP figured we had more than our share, thinking somehow white folks always got more.  Reading my book, you will learn a lot of history of religions, blacks, whites, and how we treated each other == Because whatever you have thought before, you are apt to be wrong.

Folks who went in to the auto industries decided they had enough money to bring whole families north, so what they came to were flood planes, schools worse than ours, and more trouble to get in to, so most of us wanted Daddy to know that it was way better that we never saw where he lived.  His worst times with us was when the Uncles thought it was fun to get him drunk, and those situations tore our house up for weeks.  You have not read these American stories, our stories, for we never complained, but we hid for fear of what people would think of us.  Read of my own coming of age, and learn the distance we would go to make our parents proud, for we knew how they had been the black sheep in both families, and now that we are older -- We know the false friends to my mother within our family, those who made fun of her despair, but if you follow my book and hold on, then you will find the redemptive powers of a family who believed that all people deserved better.  The sweet little farms are gone now, the dreams, and our folks passed away, but we left them pride beyond any thing which they could have imagined.

I hold nothing back from the shame which was inflicted on me, to the relationships I would not know how to handle when I left for the city; But go ahead and laugh when you feel like it in my book, for it has humor, and you are going to cry some.

I am happy to say that I have a television interview on channel 64 serving this tri-state, and I will be recording a radio show for WVXU which serves the tri-state.  I am so honored that world traveler and television and radio star, Kathryn Raaper has found my book, and she will host me.  She hopes for me to see either a Sundance Film, A Documentary, or even a Hallmark Hall of Fame show out of this, so read about this wonderful woman, and know that on May 18th, I will be on a syndicated television show with her, and then to top it off -- I have the wonderful Lee Hay who is here in our tri-state area a wonderful interviewer with whom I will pre-record on May 22nd,  for her WVXU scheduled program of local interest for this tri-state area of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky.  A radio show with Kathryn will come later, so after being very ill, I am getting this book launched.  Most of you know that it won 2012 Book Festival Awards in San Francisco, an Honorable Mention, and in Hollywood California, for the Book Festival there I received 1st in my division for Wildcard, a book of mixed genre'-- History, coming of age, redemption, and pulling it all together.  I thank my judges so very much, and if all goes well -- We are working to secure a book signing at Joseph Beth, among the nicest book stores remaining, for it is others who have seen this book as Faulknerian, Humorous, and an incredible tale.

I have been able to share it at The Santa Rosa Book Fair to help their food bank this past winter, as well as to show it below my hone in San Francisco at a progressive church in Noe Valley.  Maybe my time has come, and if it has, I will thank and praise every Xangan who came along with me.  I want to thank you all, for I learn so much from what you write, and I will readily tell you that I have, in no way, recovered the cost of publishing, but to get the message out for the beloved people who changed my life so long ago, the living and the dead, I must continue the work, and if I have a miracle such as a film or documentary -- Then I will see the mothers, fathers, and little children getting up a dawn and getting the animal care done, so they could make it to the cotton patch, I feel their presence in each step further which I go, and I will not leave them alone ever.  I am their voice, and The Southern Appalachians torn apart as good farmers may look back to its roots for a bright future.

Thanks again for checking in, for purchasing books, for prayers, and the kind wishes.  Many ask me advice about getting a book out there to sale, and I must be truthful that I have worked between illnesses, and I write dozens of letters outside of Xanga, and for the first time; Praise God, my Cincinnati audience is going to learn about where I am from along The Appalachian Trail.  I must carry the message on, and among my latest readers is a very educated young interpretor from Wahon  a city in The P.R. of China.  I can earnestly say that I am moving up globally, and I thank God for this.  My Xanga friend, Vegas Mike picks me up and pushes me onward when I am down.  Many find my brother's prologue to the story simply great, and he, as did I said that we were going to put the truth out finally.

My blessings to all, and there is no magic to any of this.  If you are a writer people have found they wish to read more of, then to take it up the first 20 story mountain, then you are on about step 3, even after all the work which I have done.  Apologies too, that I still have some few errors which bug me if no one else, but you would be apt to read over them not knowing they are there.  I respect that it is important to clean up our books, and everything has a cost, but if you believe in what you are doing as strongly as I feel about getting the word out about, "Pinkhoneysuckle," then you will rise up and take each battle on one by one.  I do wish to give you the loudest warning that if you are using a publishing company -- Please have a legal person read the fine print of your contract.  You can, "Play it safe," as I did and use Amazon's arm of publishing.

Bless you all at the Fountain of Life, and keep writing.

Lovingly, Barbara Everett Heintz