We hear the expression, “That if you can count the number of good friends on your fingers at the end of your life; then you have done well.”  I feel sadness when I have gotten news from home the past few years, for it is always the loss of another mother or father of the small group of people who were my neighbors and old friends.  I stop whatever I am doing, then and there, and some I just pray for, and some I cry for, because we were a small community, and everyone’s mother and father had some affect on you no matter the path; For good or want, for rich or for poorer, for that is the way it is when the nearest neighbor is fields or hills away from you, and I think a lot of us have a much harder time facing the superficial nature of so many others we will meet.

I almost feel sorry for the person who has never known country life, for as  hard as mine was; There were rare souls we would pass whose names we did not know.  My friend Joanie is still grieving her mother, Mrs. Marie, and when I heard her mother had died, I wept all day.  Mrs. Marie was an avowed New Testament Christian, and she lived her faith.  Come twice on Sunday and then on out for Wednesday night services, and Joan would drive her after Mrs. Marie did not feel comfortable to drive anymore.

I checked in on my old friend about a week back, for with her Mama gone, and they were, “Mama,” and “Miss,” or “Mrs.” to  southern children, and it turned out to be a good time to check on her, for it seemed that after Wednesday night service, Joanie would lay her head on her steering wheel and simply cry, and she remarked, “I can cry if I want to,” as if she needed permission.  I told her to let the tears fall, for we had so few to turn to when the storm clouds threatened, or when we had to get some help, and Joanie’s Mama took care of her family. She lost her own mother as a young woman, but Mrs. Marie would soon have an angelic other mother who I knew through out my growing up years///.  It was that way — just a few folks along the hollows which have now built up, but much of what was nice has been taken away, because those coming in had different ideas about keeping places up, and the fields where Joanie and I would play became parking places, many times, for second hand and abandoned house trailers.  Mrs. Marie had her rules, and one for certain was; “We may be poor, but we are still going to be clean,” so my friend, Joan learned from the best.

But I wanted my friend that she could stop any where along the way and bury her head in her arms, that these were special relationships born out of being on the back roads when the only people we might see for days was a neighbor checking on a fence or bringing over an apron full of green beans, because another had plenty.  It hurts to cry, to sob, to wail, and to feel you just want some peaceful old afternoons back.  My Joan did not know that a lot of us were not allowed to touch homework, while Mrs. Marie and Mr. Leon, her Daddy, they were going to see that it was done and done well.  I find that Joan in pure innocence believed that we all lived as well as her family, partially because when you had company; Somehow you gave them the very best that you had.

Country grief is sometimes harder, and a few of you will disagree with that, but with a Hospice background in nursing, I can tell you that it is harder, for you are connected from dawn until dusk, and my regret is that I have not been able to go back and help my friends in times of sorrow, for most times; Someone is dead and buried before you have any faint idea that they are gone.  So I try to help them knowing how we got through the first year or two of being old orphans, but I know the old, old story — That you must grieve until the grief leaves you and your slumber, and it is not our way to just let go — For how can they leave us growing older ourselves?  So we mourn, and now I can safely tell people that there are a few safe medications to help you get through the worst of it, for it is a depression like no other.

In high school Joanie and I would go our different ways.  She will laugh herself silly to know that I thought she was the most pure and virginal girl in the county, the girl every one counted on as being the best in our class.  I believed that she stayed away from boys, and I never knew that all of those girls were dating, and most would marry soon after high school, and if a baby was not in the oven before, then it was going to be before a year was up, for girls dreamed of having lovers who looked like John Wayne, when he was younger, or Elvis with his shirt off, and the truth was that I may have been the only girl in highschool who hadn’t been felt up.  I did’t know anything about getting to bases, and I heard that some few would be seen in the local town driving around the old grill, and that way you were warned of who a couple was and was not.

I never bothered to ask Joan and her friends what they did, for if I saw anyone it was at church.  True, my fear of men at the time was so great after my grandfather that I would have been terrified for a boy to even hold my hand, for was that another way of spreading diseases depending on where those fellows had last been sticking their hands.  It has taken me 64 years to learn that other than the fact my friend, Betty Ruth and I were reading her brother’s college literature to realize that Joanie needed to have talked to me more about such things, for she was so wise by my way of seeing things.  High school has been a long time ago, many relationships before, this long long marriage, but no one told me that I was what you might call, “Pure.”  Good Lord, I would have been a Mother Superior ten times older if the nuns, and there were few, had known this young woman was so afraid of boys and men that she immediately began to stutter and endeavored to bring them to our, “New Testament Faith.”

I was the perfect Catholic daughter, so maybe that is why Mama would half beat me to death — To get the Catholic orders out of my head.  It just made me curiosity grow stronger about all of these faith groups which were not ours.  I cannot wait until Joan and I can sit down again to get some idea of what she and her high school friends did, for Betty and I had tunnel vision for college, and I am positive Betty was more enlightened than me, but she was probably the most academic among us.  You do not know me, and you do not know these people, so why in the heck am I writing any of this?  Maybe I need Joanie and the more mature girls from our class to make certain I am not missing out on something really important again.  Maybe I wish that I was them, and I could be near what is left of the old town, the share croppers, the roads which led to no where.

Right now though, My old friend needs some comforting from me, so I will write little notes, and I will let all who have gone drift in and out of my vision,, for when the time comes; I know they will ease our pain.  I see them all in an afterglow, and I to not want to worship death when there is life; But let me take some of your pain, for as the back home girls with any dignity do, then we hope to lift people up, and to dry their tears.  We want to let them know that we will be there when the storm clouds rise, and thank you; A Lynchburg Lemon Aide would taste just fine, so let’s all go out and sit for a time, for we want to hear the news from up the road.  That is who we were, and who we are in some ways, even as I sit on the edge of California. 

Maybe if I get back that way Joan and I can go pick some blackberries, make some pies, and have the old friends tell us what really happened on those weekend nights.  Who is lost; who is gone, and  was 1966 a very good year?

Barbara Everett Heintz, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” Amazon, Kindle, and Create Space KDP

I began this weblog hours ago only; “Hello,”  My  back space stopped working, so it is probably the little green men stuck in my blog site. According to A former regular visitor to my site, one who states that he is a computer genius, for he has been told he is by professors; One only gets visits to their websites if we use words like, “Fuck,” which I use sparingly; but this is an important matter, so I shall give you a word list to call people to, “Pinkhoneysuckle,”  which is my book, for which you can check Amazon, but for this Pinkhoneysuckle blog of mine.   Here is my list of attention grabbers:  Vagina, Penis, Clitoral Massage, Testicles, Prostate Massage; ( Do not ask anyone about this procedure; and FGS; Do not try it unless you have some anatomy lessons first;  Look, six years of school, and a twenty plus career allows health professionals some knowledge not observed by the general public!

Do I have your attention;”No,” Alright, I will add more sexually explicit words: Intercourse, Orgasm, Oral Sex; but, for God’s sake; Do not go sticking your mouth on someone’s other parts unless you know them well, because you can still get AIDS or funky mouth sores, plus some folks are just nasty and do not wash between partners.  I am getting to you, so here I end with ejaculation, self pleasuring, and premature  ejaculation.  That does it for now, so now that I have your attention and my computer is not back spacing on its own, then I would like to bring up some concerns of mine regarding, President Obama, and his health care side kicks, especially — The Clintons.  Now I will admit that I voted for these people, sadly knowing that I had to choose the lesser evil, for a president has about zero power unless we finally elect a congress who will hellp them pass bills, and honestly;  I think Mr. Obama is probably about as good as it gets as far as having some definite and valued Judeo-Christian ethics, for the man has among the more readible face than any one other than the times poor President Ford smashed his head boarding Air Force One.

We voted for him, because only an idiot would endeavor to win an election based on raising the price of Medicare or eliminating more services, and only the heartless would dream of endeavoring to touch our Social Security and not find his finger gently smashed in good organic cow manure.  I believe that Mormon people are very smart, but to have one of their own get out there and bring up touching our Medicare and our Social Security is like sticking your head in a hyenna’s mouth and yelling, “Eat Me,” for you will not get elected to the office for which you are seeking.  The church elders should have had a talk with Senator Romney about the facts of life, for clearly — Having five children shows that you have not figured out birth control yet.  I shall not address that I am slightly too young for Medicare, and do not ask me the number of children which we passionate people had together, for ours came about me fully aware of the integrity of all body parts listed above — All that darned anatomy and physiology just blew right past our genitalia, and thus we have several brilliant children.

Now, though, I believed that President Obama had NIH, and CDC doing the right thing by encouraging people to endeavor to recover from their colds and flue at home with watchful care.  Even I can tell you that, if a person continues a fever after they have had tylenol, and if their mucous is as green as guacamole — or darker and the consistency of play dough, then this person needs to get to the physician, Pronto!

The problem is that elderly people and folks with little children do not get there always in time, and people are now afraid to bother their physicians until they are short of breath (SOB) and knocking at death’s door.  Patients are having to decide whether or not they should see a doctor this flu season, and I want the folks in Washington to know that some of these deaths were likely unnecessary, but people do not know what to do when they have no money, and people certainly do not want to have a physician itching to get to the golf course or out to the next drug representative’s free meal, for; Look, these people went to school way longer than me, and we nurses are really who is going to make the judgment to call the Dr. in if you are looking a little grey around the ocular orbits and if your lips and nail beds are tinged a color of blue.

I respect most physicians, and I earnestly believe that we need to let the doctors and health care teams do patient care, even keeping them in the hospital, for instance, if they say, “I feel too weak to go home,” as the nurse or tech ties their shoe and drags them off the stretcher to slam them in a wheel chair, for folks — It is the truth, I am too heavy right now going back to grabbing sweets to go to keep up the energy through a thirteen hour day when I, along with every body else did not have time to eat.   I mean this!  There were times when we nurses would suddently realize we had no break, had no lunch or dinner, but worse; We forgot to pee!”  I know that I should say, urinate, but I am testing to see how awake you are.  At the time I left Hospice nursing which I did in the latter part of my career, we had gone up to where we had five to six patients per shift, and five was the easy evening.

I put up with occassionally being questioned about my organizational skills, for I was going to take care of you as if you were my mother, That was the best advice Mrs. Lela Brown, my first nursing supervisor gave to me:  “Take care of every patient like that patient is your mother, and in the beginning, I could get this and all of the paper work done with four patients assigned to me; but now my friend, you are not guaranteed that you are going to see an RN, because two year program folks and three month trained techs have been touched with wands, for they are given responsibilities  which they told us back in the 1980s that those programs did not prepare the nurse enough, but either we are to believe that two years of extra training from a college was a joke, for even then two year RNs could do what four year RNs did, but bathing was the main patient care assigned to techs who hated RNs, for would you not hate someone who asked you to go and change some poor soul’s diaper, but most of us, not wanting to be hated went and helped anyway. 

The point I am making here is that you are getting less skilled nursing care unless you are in the ICU or the ER where there is usually a stronger ream of more highly trained staff, or people who can make more rapid judgments, so I would suggest that instead of going to the hospital for a new on set headache that you never had before; then you might could say that in addition, you were hit by a car this same time last year;  You will get more aggressive care.  I want to make it doubly understood that there are amazingly skilled two year people out there in the hospitals,  and those techs have more crammed in to their programs, plus nurses as professionals work their rear ends off.  Now wouldn’t it be something if Mr. Obama and his team got together and limited the number of sicker patients found in hospitals now back to four.  Wouldn’t it be kinder that hospital’s could see that you were washed and cared for instead of wiping you down with a bunch of baby wipes. 

Here is a neat trick for you.  Go out and dig a great big hole, run around that hole about ten times, and get all smelly and then sweaty, and then wipe under your arms with baby wipes or hospital wipes; Good Lord, I don’t care; Try them all, for what you are going to find is that you usually still smell bad if you give yourself the old arm pit sniff test.  Come on; Is that a way you want to treat your mother?  What kind of health care do you want, for we are letting the insurance companies  and drug companies determine patient care, for they have to spend a whole lot of research time, but they also have to gain physician’s favor to hope he will prescribe the new hundred thousand dollar a year medication which was developed to allow for a timed released sexual encounter.  Women suffer through menopause, for so little has been developed to ease the symptoms, but put your money on the testosterone and the erection from which you could hang a coat hangar, and this world is a better place.

Would it not be an amazing event for researchers who come to these drug companies and insurance companies spent a week in a hospital setting on a general medical surgical floor to get an idea of what sick patients look like, how hard the staff is worked at these hospital for profit places.  Once you could count on the religious order hospitals, but now a lot of them are having to sell to what I call the Hospital Makeurcash owned by the doctors, some who have stock in the drug companies, and most who enjoy vacations courtesy of the drug companies who then charge the patient, because they have so much research money involved.  I would tell you that you are not only paying for the back research and testing, but you are also sending families on cruises.  I’m not going to beat up these physicians too much, for some work tirelessly and have no family time, and I am no genie, but I think I can look at the crystal ball and see the fat cats feeding the fish; But you do not want to hear about national health care.

I am getting more anxious about national care as well which I saw as the fix all, but now the Obama administration is going after the physicians who have endeavored to observe the chart which shows levels of pain, and the doctors who cared, instead of being contol freaks afraid of older people getting addicted to pain medicine as these elders endeavor to greet another day of bone on bone pain when they are that arthritic and not candidates for joint replacement surgery; There is now a move on from NIH and from CDC to avoid giving people medication which actually takes care of your pain.  We do not keep bottles of Vicodin sitting around, but most doctors write for that when a patient has chronic pain, or after a surgical or extensive dental procedure, but; Yes, it is being suggested that doctors stop writing these perscriptions, for patients may get addicted.  Once more, immediately after the election, we have government going in and telling physicians what they can and cannot prescribe?  In other words, stay out of the doctor’s office you Medicare and Medicaid patients, for we are going to make it uncomfortable for the physician to write you a script for pain.  They have at least eight years of school, and many specialist have 6 to 10 more years in for residencies, but cut health care off at the knees.  Let us see the picture here.  Elder people with degenerative bone issues, arthritic spines, and even the service people who suffer from limbs pieced together after being in a vehicle blown up as on duty personnel in Iraq or Afghanistan, and I do not want to ask where we go from here; these are the people most apt to follow the President and his Administration’s pact of saving on health care; Just do not come in for your pain medicine, for we are watching your physician, for you might become dependent and have a happier and more pleasant old age if we fix your pain meds as such you have to feel bad that you need them, for between your pain and quality of life; NIH and CDC see it as more fit for you to bear the burden of pain than think you are going to get medication from a doctor or hospital.  That is again government deciding what is best for a patient, and I know that President Obama’s mother suffered as most of our parents suffer from some age related degenerative process, but you know what?  That suffering is not necessary, for physicians can titrate doses of medication to make certain a patient is not receiving too much, and all people should be entitled to such care.

So, I am worried for you and for me, for if this is the way the Obama administration wants to fix health care; then I want my vote back, and Mr. Romney, I was selling you short, for you got a plan for Massachusetts citizens to have access to health care.  President Clinton is a powerful man, and I heard him on the news talking about how they have to get  doctors to stop perscribing this medication, so I knew we were in trouble then.  I believe that we, the people, and our M.D.’s know us better than anyone running either of these major respected houses of health care which is paid for the American people.  So, now that I have your attention;  what is your concern of our broken health care system, and is it appropriate for our politicians to be threatening our doctors and their patients?

I do ask you if Mr. Clinton, our former President being very active in this kind of work.  Does he care that average citizens do not get his level of care?  I should sum all of this up with one word, “Humanity,” for where is our humanity when we get our health care advice over a TV news broadcast.  Lord, would you help our physicians, our nurses, researchers, pharmacist, and all who endeavor to act out of mercy to care for every human being, “Take care of them as if they were your mother.”

Thank you Mrs. Lela Brown, for I carried that with me and practiced it throughout my career.  I wish that you were here today, but all lives seem too short.  Let us take Mrs. Brpwm’s lesson, among the earliest of African American women to be a head nurse in a major university hospital all the way to Washington, for you would not have wanted your job today. It is hard, and we need  a teacher, a guide, but mainly, we need your heart.

Barbara Everett Heintz, RN,BSN – Retired

Author of, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” on Amazon, Kindle Ready – KDP, Create Space — Book Awards, Hollywood and San Francisco — 1st in Hollywood Book Festival 2012 – See Reviews on Amazon

Sometimes I write things, and they disappear, and such has been my luck tonight.  Maybe it was overkill to admit that Xanga had a profound effect on my life in bringing me to a point where I had lived, written, worked, — Provided history as accurately as possible, and have awards to show from San Francisco and Hollywood that I won something in their 2012 Book Festivals with my book, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” and that the Hollywood was first in category;  That was one which took my breath away, so I can say that I got encourage from Xanga like no other place — Comments, kindness, absolute love,  And sadly, these people come and go in your life, for it takes time to keep us with even doing small task to help promote books.  My next speaking engagment is apt to be in Cincinnati with the radio great interviewer, Lee Hay, who asked to interview me, and I would have polished her shoes for the opportunity.  I have some brown and black shoe polish from the old days that we may have to set fire to to get any melted down, but I mean it;  I am so honored, for WVXU is among my favorites of radio stations in Cincinnati.  Lee is also the arts magazine producer, so she is one busy lady. My2012 summer awards made my heart sing, and to go to Hollywood and receive such a warm welcome and a first for my book’s genre will go  down as happiness deeper than I can express.

I know the Xanga people who have done anything for me and my book, and I wish to thank you again, those who lifted me up when I was falling, and those who gave counsel, who expressed love for the person who I am inspite of having all of the marks of, “Pinkhoneysuckle Years.”  I would obviously beg some of you to consider getting my book for some reading; “Appalachia,” now why would you want to read about a diasphora which really took place aroung 60 years ago now, and I would add to that — Because it affects every rust belt city to this day, much of the poorer south, and Appalachian people are having to listen to California and Alice Waters with her, “Eat seasonally, eat organicly if possible, and eat vegetables. Show children how to grow vegetables and fruits and to stay away from cola and sweets.  Please, will anyone tell that dear woman that such was the only way of life we all knew back in our mountains and valleys, and in Falls Mill close to where I lived;  You could have all of your products stone ground — Back in the heart of the farms the government of the USA decided we should leave for jobs north in nasty factories; So they were calling in loans, so wives and children would be left to try to salvage what we could.  I can reassure you that my Daddy left for those years with the clothes on his back, and another shirt,  maybe, his underclothes; maybe one change, and he was one of thousands.

The truth of the death of southern farms, and the lie perpetuated in California and where no one else knows that southern living was about living off the land, the water, and what meat you could bear to slaughter, and we are not living in some kind of new age, Alice Waters, discovery.  People think they are richer now if they  can be self sufficient and provide safe food, and we picked our for by 8 AM in season, and it would be washed, cleaned and cooked for noon day dinner, and even iced tea was too expensive for us until Dad got to come home, and we could afford tea and sugar.  We need for you to help us know that this was an agrarian country mainly at the turn of last century, and like thieves; It was taken to manipulate the economy.

If you want love and coming of age stories, I had to get that in, for a real life could take you through visions of what we loved that was good and yet the terror which came at a woman, broken in one way or the other like some mule which tried to get away from their whippings; We could not.  Humor flows through the pages, for the insanity just sometimes changed from tears to belly laughter — just insane, and out of control, so we were coping just coping like every one else.  You have heard all of this from me my Xanga friends, and I want you to accept my deepest apology that I need to make the plea for some more of you to take a chance of purchassing my book.  Through Amazon, it cost less than seven dollars if you have Kindle, or if you want a copy of the book, and you want it signed; We can get it back and forth.

But I am asking you to help me get my book out in your neck of the woods.  Have you ever decided that begging is not beneath you?  Well I am begging more of you to take a chance on my book, and I will give you a heart felt promise that if you are a Xanga regular, and you have items to sell, then help me to know who you are. I cannot possibly say that I will buy from every one, but I think we can help each other more than I have done, but I am only now getting well enough to take on the courage of the new life world of The internet supper talented.  We are hindered somewhat, because we are sizing down as many of our age must, but maybe we could even get Xanga to let us have a skills and sales roo, so our writing pages stay pure to making something one longs to read.

I apologize to bring it up, for I thought Xanga would be a diverse enough group of people who might want to read what the poorest did to endeavor to keep a way of life well and acceptable as the norther factories gave no housing, just grimmy dirt and men who felt shame they could not provide, and I ask God right now that some of your eyes may be opened that I am telling the story, for our pareents have gone on, and I am rich if only five of you heed the call to order my book however you are willing to, for that is five more who can message to others that the author is a friend of yours.  Help me however you can, and it is not your, “Must have,” for we are so broke, but I want to work for seed money to do somethin which will make a lasting change in the lives of poor women and children,  I have all kinds of dreams, but most of them involve cooperatives to inspire and to educate younger folks who do not remember wonder bread and balonga, and I am not going to bring change without knocking through just asking. 

Again to the ones who did something, any thing, I have expressed gratitude all along the way, and I know who has lit the lamp for me; So once again, person to person and beyond all measure; You are my tresure and I will never forget you. You are held in the highest estem.

So, please consider me, Barbara Everett Heintz, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” and the story which left no rocuntered to tell it as it happened. Amazon, Kindle ready.

Thank you, and I will leave this at your open hearts as we.

God Bless, and Love, Barb Hz

It has been 14 years since my father died, and I can only remember, for picking out his coffin on January 20th is what we did on my birthday, and my mother and daddy wanted the most lined, intact body buried as such the earth could not touch them, and they wanted to be dressed in their best and prettiest clothes when the spirit left their body, for they would tell you the old self was worn out, and they were tired, and we had no doubt that they would be spirits united with all the spirits gone before when they left their body, but I thought our example of The Crucifiction gave us insight into when Jesus would reappear, so I counted the hours as if it was a Good Friday, and for whatever it does or does not mean to you — Jusus died, and was buried, and he would reappear on the third day — Arising body and Holy Spirit from the dead — So for me, I accept that my father’s spirit had to be away, and that it would leave before we burried him, for it took an extra day for us to have the funeral and just to get all of the family in to say, “Farewell,” But then there was the hawk which I have written about before, that as the graveside prayers were concluding, stormed out of the grave, soaring up like a Blue Angel, making a perfect spin and climbing at a speed which was so rapid that we all stood dumb struck as it flashed out of site, and we knew what had happened, and I have no problems with your disagreement, but you were not there, and everyone near to the lowering of Daddy’s body stepped back, our mouths opened, and finally my sister Marcie got the picture.  Dad’s spirit was leaving us, and the poor tired body was going to rest at Walnut Grove, and in our belief; Those who died in Christ will be the first to arise from the grave, so at some point the new body and the new spirit will be one again.

It sounds like an impossibility to so many who can imagine nothing beyond this short time here, and people will argue over what happens to the body of the dead, and they will quote scripture chapter and verse for their logic, but I earnestly witnessed that sign, and I accepted that the inner being of my father had taken on the powerful Indian symbol of the mighty hawk, and he wanted us to be struck without words; For what we hear that are not spoken words leave an impression like no other.  He would be with his oldest and best friends, with my mother’s folks, and all too soon, our mother would join him, and we gave her all of the best as well, no funeral cost left to cover, for they had taken all they needed with them, and the hawk family still watches, watches us to see the comings and goings, and we have to go to Walnut Grove one more time for certain, for our broken brother, James, so injured from birth is now so fragile, feeble and ready to be with our Mom and Dad again.

That night after the burial terrible storms would come to Tennessee, for the temperature that day rose to 70 degrees, and pictures we had made after the women of the community served food, and no one left hungry after the long service; But every picture of Dad’s children and grandchildren show our garment twisted and turned as the sun filled sky filled with beautiful cumulus clouds, and we were not thinking too much unusual, for Tennessee is the kind of state that can go from and ice storm to a cloudless warm day, and the earth usually reaks with the fragrance of spring — Earth’s civities open for the new growth, for the new and precious plants which are started from seed as February comes to an end. Among my greatest fortunes is that, even if I could not see a season, I would know it, for the fragrance of the changing seasons is remarkable to me, but spring is the essence of Mother Earth and Father Sky getting ready for the biggest pallette of color and for the mightiness of human beings to plant the food and catch fresh water from the over flowing troughs of water where seasons are relevant.

People died that night, and we had left Mama with her house full of company, and we stayed in Winchester, for that is what we do when we grieve; We gather in, and the years have soared while the very last of my Daddy’s siblings, all of his best old friends, and neighbors are in that someplace where we can not go, for it has been a harvest of our parent’s generation, and while Mama and Daddy would beg us to cry no more, just to watch the Hawk families, and if we have a few extra flowers, then scatter them over other graves; Just now and then, the same old feelings well up, especially now that our old home place, after we sold it, wound up in foreclosure, and they cut down Dad’s beautiful pecan trees which shaded us all of the summers through decades before; Then we can hear them, and they want us to just let it go.  We will know our mother, for she will have a nosegay of little pink roses which we had placed in her hands, and Daddy will have on the green dress shirt and his best shoes, and on that day when the earth flames open with fire and majesty, and the great storms finally end; That is how we shall know them, for if one believes in Bible Liturgy, then one must also believe in the mystical, for Heaven and Hell hold vast accounts of what to expect, but we have to endeavor to make sense from the ancient written text to understand that this life just gives us clues, and no living persons we know or have ever met has been to Heaven — More likely some have known Hell on Earth as bombs explode in war; But the Hell of the Bible is caught in paintings which may have been inspired by glances in; For all things are possible.

Each of you have known of mystical times and events, and they come more often as glimpses as we look back and remember moments of last good-byes. I will not sit and argue religion with anyone, but it works for me to believe that each of us have a dying day, and we have our personal Easter when we have to leave our loved ones for a time; But The Blue Angel of a Hawk, in the dead of January, on a day brilliant with warmth and sunshine to collapse in to powerful storms which was so out of place for Middle Tennessee’s southern border has left me with a feeling and a message that all is well, but I wanted to know you longer my Mother and my Father, and to let you know I published my book, and it has some coast to coast following.  The Atlanta girls still keep watch on James, and we will put him away — just like you want us to, and when that last day comes; Just know that his arms will no longer be contractured, that his pain is over, and if he gets to you before us, I am going to send you a spool of thread, my parents, and you will get the joke.

Another birthday has passed, and a new year of life finds me repressing the urge to long for you here; So I will let you both go back to a nice warm sleep, for every day is your Easter until we all meet again.

Barbara Everett Heintz – “Pinkhoneysuckle,” Amazon, Kindle Ready, KDP, and  Create Space

I wanted to say thanks again to our friends who promote our books out there.  I am lining up another radio interview with a very talented person in Cincinnati, Lee Hay with WVXU radio, as well as she is the arts writter for WVXU Arts Magazine for All Going On Around Cincinnati.  This is a perfect setting for me, because people here in San Francisco know so little about, Our “Appalachian Trail,” and it is an amazing way how it goes south from Kentucky and on in to West Virginia, but The Ohio River Could easily be a point where you might want to stop, check out being a volunteer on a river boat where river life actually exists, for you would be amazed at how those boats, through all seasons, work on, and they are just right at the rail yards, fo Union Station in Cincinnati sends out a whole lot of freight as well as it still has some passenger train service, among the last great slow trains which go to Chicago where you boar the big Zephyr heading west.

Appalachia would probably keep you on the Kentucky side before you headed more north and east in West Virginia, and to the brave hikers who have done the trail, and who know our little towns and valleys; Just keep coming and remember your apt to have to do some swimming and rock climbing.  It is just beyond me why they never took us on school trips to see where our great trail which was our walking way through the mountains, much less, we never had any summer programs which would have led us to knowing how to become trail guides.  This was such an important portion of our culture for us to be proud of; But being proud was not too distant from being a, “Show Off,” so we only searched in woods near by our homes, and in that search; I became, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” for it settled in my body and brain, and it is my word, for I could not own the beautiful plants which gave the bees their most glorious moments of mating nature’s plants from the wild berry to the hard nut trees which were provisions for animal and man.  Let it be remembered; Let it be, and we have found our path after all.  Blessings, Barbara Everett Heintz, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” Amazon, and Kindle.  If you find my book, you will know that it had to be written by a child/woman with roots in the dark earth.

Lovingly to All,

Barb Heintz

Dear Friends of Xanga,

I very purposefully have poured out the vessel which I am to you, though at times; I have kept it well hidden as a blogger.  I would very much like to hear from some of you and how you get through periods of depression, or are you among those people who are safely immune from this thief which withers us at most inconvenient times.  I, after many years of study, work with other persons, and work which is apt to follow me all the days  of my life Tfully accept the disease model of depression, and yes — I believe there are catylist in each of our lives which can make it worse, or which draws us out from our dark walks with the demon of depression.

A purely objectionable look at what depression is thought to be by many is, “It is the difference between our expectations and our realities,” so wouldn’t it be the easiest practice going to work on changing that which we expect, and a behavioral therapist would immediately give you some assignments to work on  helping one to manage our days as such we do not keep the self destructive behaviors of just bouncing back and forth in to our longings for what is hurting us and lead us in a direction of finding what else is out there which will satisfy our needs for a reality which we long for but which, no matter how much we long for it, is never going to be our fate. Bury the past, build a future which is realistic to our life’s circumstances, and just keep working and working to leave the trauma which unbalances the equasion of reality, for only  then are we apt to be able to build and to move on.

The sheer medical models at looking at what and how your body chemistry can be tweaked by medications is still in a new frontier, and many people do not have the compassion to deal with what they label most unflatteringly as the, “Prozac Personality.”  These fortunate few are apt to wake up each day with little examination of past events and fully determined that depression is a state of over self indulgence, and to them I would loudly and forcefully say that we would trade their unchallenged personalities in a minute if they would agree to take on the curtains which sneak up on our joy and poson our moments with the feeling, “Something is Wrong.”  “We do not want to show dour faces, nor to we wish to spoil other’s ability to shield themselves from vectors of pain which are unseen to them.  Oh; Please, none of  us who have suffered wish to keep playing the deck of cards we were handed..

Here is some bad news as well, that few people will ever get through this life without hitting bottom at some point, for depression like joy is simply a feeling.  Now mind you there are some sickos out there who do not have the emotion it takes to be labeled as average citizens, and they may just have endorphins which are almost magical and still be able to be empathic, or they may be sociopathic:  They, as sociopaths see themselves as beyond the ordinary human being, and these folks are often criminals, for, “They deserve to feel good at the expense of any one in their way — Even to the extent of becoming black widows or more recent and notorious cases such as those who murder and mame to move anyone or any obstacle which is seen as in defference to their vision of all powerful as well as deserving.  These people would fall in to the realm of demons, and certainly pastors who have raped and brutalized children while preaching the evils of other’s lives are pure example of the sociopath, and these people are too dangerous to be loose in society.  Can anything help them?  According to the most recent studies of their brain on autopsy — The answer is probably not.

But, Dear Xangans, we can help one and another by being open vessels and letting others view into our hearts.  Most of us know the utmost of lost and of down days.  Most of us recover, and it is the how we do this without being destructive to other human beings.

So I come to you with my own admissions of imperfection, and I humbly ask others who suffer depression to the point you have needed intervention or expect that it may be in your future.  Share with us; show us; and Please tell me about your coping measures as I have told you about my own, the three days.  I did not tell you that I do not have mania which follows.  Manic depression is among the other most difficult to manage of the illnesses which affect our behavior toward ourselves and to others, for it takes the stricktest of compliance to a medical regimen, so this too, falls in a category where constant monitoring of medications and life long medication will be necessary.

,Depression;  Will you share if you suffer the consequences of it.  Is it circumstantial or cyclic; For those are different categories — Normal sadness is not depression, but the feelings are similar.  We are only human who grieve.  I am looking for honest coping skills that we can share, for people are labeled with depression, so you are welcome to use alias, or you can throw your name out there like me, for I long to help those who cannot help themselves.  The door is open, so come in, and share the best way that you can, for most of us are going to be there to console you if that is what you ask of us out of truth and a clean heart.

It is your turn to walk to the podium.

Barbara Everett Heintz, Author of, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” on Amazon — Kindle Ready, Among The Darkest of Stories Which Will Leave You In Laughter and In Tears — A Novel of Several Generations of Depressed People and The Madness Which Consummed Many…

I often so sanctimoniously listen to others as they bear their selves to me, because I am, and for the most part, people believe this of me — That I am a wise woman, and the pathetic truth is that when it comes to most of lives beyond my own, I do seem to have a lot of insight.  I have lived much of what you have lived, and I have met you on your journeys as we pass each other, and I am moving past mid life into a place where, if nothing else, then I should be able to put my arms around you and to say; “Do not worry sweet one, your pain will go away, and you will know laughter.  You will know that the sun and the moon play dirty tricks behind your back and dance with the stars, and you will catch them one night being naughty calling all of those at the bottom of the earth to come up and to play before the heat of the sun is just too hot for all but The Queen and the King of Fire to Dance With.

I tell you, reluctantly to pray unceasingly, for the reward ahead is greater than all which is behind, and I try so hard to be that person my self, for I want only the best for you and for me — I want all of our early trials to be just that — Trials and for a Gracious God, A at Blessed Mother, and one large basket of love to be left at our doors every day.  If there is anything remarkable about me, it is that I do not envy the wealth and success of any of you, for I know the truth about how you cope inspite of the fact you can jump in to a warm people and watch the snow from an inside tropical garden where the scent of a gardenia almost smothers you with something so glorious that any one unaccustomed to it would pass out just from the pleasure.  Most long for your world, because I have seen you at the hour when you depart this life, and you are naked and without, going into the unknown just like the rest of us,  and no great drummers come or dancers with leis that welcomed your importance on jaunts to the islands fall down on others shoulders as they dance the last dances of life somewhere far away from the unremarkable moment when you are again just one of us — One who lived and passed this way, and all of the appropriate mourners will come to the memorials planned for you and the celebration that your name will be carved in to some monument if you were generous.  Some granite or carver of stone will emboss the last of you in this life.

It does seem wonderful to the souls in little houses, to those who repeat the institutional goodbyes to console the mourners that this sameness is the great equalizer such as the moment when a head presses hard on a cervix to open and each trembles for a minute until their is the a first breath, the same air of the same world will full all who have lived up on this earth, and it has the suspense of the most poor and desparate of souls to live and to breath for a time. ”God,” I think that has to be the greatest of your triumphs that man and woman rich or poor would have two moments in life which they share no matter the station — The breath that is life, and the breath of farewell, and it is one common thread from there with everyone unsatisfied with their poor lot depending on the day.

I am going to tell you though, that too many of us suffer in the great in between something which I hide like it was a treasure of the speck of poison which would destroy all of our lives, and I am so tired of it — The, “It,” that depression which so many of us suffer from, and I am going to tell these people right now that I suffer too, and there are sometimes months and weeks when I would just like to rest it all away not to have to put up with another tomorrow when I hurt.  Did you hear me?  I am so tired of these waves of depression which I thought would disappear, but they return, and I take the Dr’s medication, and I understand that I suffer from PTSD, for no one could have been the child that I was, that my brothers and sisters, and so many around us were without being plain and damaged goods, absoluutely tormented, “Damaged Goods.” 

For you who are so brilliant that you believe you have never known depression, then are you not special, but the sad part is that you hardly know love either, for the extremes of emotion are the characteristics which make keep us all from being a bunch of zombies flitting around and not feeling anything.  Depression and joy, again polar opposites, but I have been through it all with depression except for the magical day when it will disappear and leave me alone, and it is crushing and bruising, and I can tell others things to do which seem to help them, but I am so tired, and I am so weary with having these weights up on these shoulders.  They were the demons of my parents which separated them from love, and only in later years would they have the courage to let much of it go as they buried a brother, a sister, the last parents, and had what they felt was all of their needs in this life, then I watched the tears become less and their threats to murder each other to subside, and now I do not know how they got to that place which seemed to be a little better.

They both began to see nature as that which was far more beautiful that the worry that their skin was becoming thinner and older, and they complained about the pain in their bodies as arthritis, the same which I have, ate away at their joints, but they were satisfied with the old television shows, with the middle of the day naps, with the trips, “Uptown,” and with Sunday Church where they got all of the news, and as they got older and better, our middle age slipped in and so many of us were haunted by the earlier years that we felt mercy would never come to our door.  Right now, I need mercy so much, and I need for my book to do well — My book where I told you about their stories and ours, but now it is our turn to be fascinated by the hummingbirds, the colors of the flower’s blooms, and to know the stories of the neighbors, for the sheer pleasure of clean sheets and the warm bath, and I have my moments; Do not get me wrong, but I need right now, and I do not know what I need, but I can help you in an amazing way, because I have walked in your steps, have carried your burdens.  I have been young, in love, middle aged, and a career mother, and I left that past behind.  The people who once could cannot hurt me any more.

Oh, if I tell the truth; Some important things have hurt undeniably, that where we would live became ordained, for it was the gift my husband wanted of all of his mother’s things, this place in San Francisco where sometimes it appears tropical, but the Pacific brings in cool summer’s air, and sometimes one just wants to be warm.  I remember long, hot and miserable hours east of the rockies, and I am going there this year.  My husband has lost his ability to do magical things with old houses, but he has field his life with an elder gentlemean’s orchestra, and with the stimulating conversation of people who, unlike him, took other careers outside of orchestral life, so his musical opinion is so valued among them, and I feel no jealosey that I am second wife to an orchestra.  I am even resolved somewhat that the daughter who I believed would be a guiding light in our older age, the most feminine girl on the face of the earth has gone butch and decided on a lesbian’s life.  I found some peace in realizing that I had another daughter whose father walked her down the aisle as she was married by the same Priest who is a beloved friend and who gave her first communion.

I cannot say that I entirely admire my lesbian daughter, for the person she has lied to most is herself.  In the neighborhood where she has moved, the little girls of mothers will be kept from her home, and that is a fact, for the attitude there, and for good reason — after being a center of sexual abuse for a large diocese; Then why on earth would you want your little girls and teenage girls to hang out with these two women, and if that offends you; Then that is too damned bad, for sexual abuse goes both ways.  I spent my younger years fighting off men, and I could not believe that on at least three separate occasions as I grew older, I had to give some lesbian ladies the news to get their hands off of me.  We were nurses, and we hugged each other and we consoled each other, and it carried over in to our outside lives, but most of us meant absolutely anything sexual about it, but I learned that some ladies that I knew had thoughts which I did not have, and I had to tear one foolish woman away from me, and I have stayed away from that house like it was an opium den, for I was very embarassed that, I, a woman with five children, would be victim of  a grown up woman to whom I had shown kindness but never any sexuality issues, that she would start putting her grabbing hands all over me.  It felt like violation of old, only this time it was a woman, and I could not imagine that anyone had mistaken the effort to converse, a hug of, “Hello,” and just endeavoring to offer a person respect as a reason to grab at me, and I was over fifty!  So get real; If mothers are going to watch their little boys from all male households, then there is no rule which states that they are not going to watch their little girls equally, and if that offends you;  “Tough,” because I repeat that we take care of our children and guard them, and if they choose something way too uncomfortable for us; At least, in my case,  I have another daughter and grandaughter who does need and care for me, and I would advise Mom’s to protect their daughters after my own experience.

But I started out trying to figure out why these dark and blue days will not let go of me as they hang on like a winter’s night, and I am aware that it is hard not to be the pretty girl; Being a mom and grandmother is hallowed ground, but it is not the approval that came with youth.  Depression does seem to have time limits, so I tell myself as I tell others, to be certain you’ve had the talk therapy which you need, take the medicine the physician gives to you, and if it does not let up in a three day period; then it is time to go and to ask for more help.

I mention in my book, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” that three days seems like a time for all things — three days for antibiotics or antidepressants to show some effect, three days between the death, then the burial and ressurection of Jesus, three days before the soul seems to leave the body after a death, and even frresh fruit is not going to linger on a counter for much more than three days, like the rarest bouquet of flowers — three days; Lord, will you not help me but three more days, or that is how things work for me!  I just offer it as a guideline, but to the most depressed, I beg them to not wait more than three hours before they get help.  Depression hurts; It kills, and it is an evil which afflicts many of us, not because we are evil, but because our chemistry is screwed up.

I want it to just go away one day, leave my heart, and leave my home.  Yes, I would like to go back and to retrace some of the steps which I walked along the way, “Dear Lord,” but I can not, and I was mislead about a lot that was important, but so were thousands of women before and after me, so please call me from the dark, and let me play among the moon and the stars.  I am overwhelmed by the cyclic nature of the pain, and as Morley Safer of 60 minutes used to say, that if every depressed person had that which they needed to ease their pain, then a whole lot of people would be walking around with IV drips of morphine.

I have come out of my cloack, and I will live, but I am very tired of living this way.  It began when  I was a little girl out of fear and despair, and my fears, even of death are minor.  My fear of losing my husband, my brothers, my sisters, and no one should have to lose a child, but loses will come, and it is a part of the last decade of life to learn to say goodbyes, but most of us have all said many farewells already, and the first farewells as adults were the ones where we learned that romantic love was more of something on a movie set, and we would rarely have that kind of love in our lives — For it hardly exist.

I wish you well though, and whatever help you can give to get me through some of these days of three, then I accept the invitation, though we all live by different drummers, and are called by singular bells or a cocphony of such, but I need to feel better, and for these three days to go away.  I need for the world to be new, and I wish, for you, the same.  Love and Blessings, Barb

Barbara Everett Heintz, Author of, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” Amazon, Kindle Ready, Award Winning Novel in 2012 in Hollywood and San Francisco Book Festivals — With a 1st in category in Hollywood

I am not fond of The Footprints Lock, for if you write books; God knows you want feedback from outside Xanga, but somehow mystery gremlins had reset my settings.  It is hard enough to get one’s name and book out there without marking, “Kiss Off,” to your public.  I can deal with a little controversey now and then, and this may have come about through two gross out sisters who were setting you up, one acting like Polyanna on her first blogs, then the other would tell you that you had just stuck your nose in private Texas family business, and she would be telllin’ Daddy that you had said a kind word to their unmanageable little darling home from college for the summer.

I kid you not that it was a set up, and I had to contact Xanga HQ to get rid of them from my site.  I expect this is the deal — That once you put  your name big and bright to be seen and heard, then you are walking in a mine field of not just the good folks but the ones loonier than a box of stale circus peanuts, and it can get fairly unpalitable.  Our chances for privacy in today’s world are zero to none, and those of us who always hoped for the best quality of human beings get very disappointed when we see that, in reality, we have to go on misplaced trust, and none of us are capable of seeing in the darkness of cyber space exactly what we are getting in to, and the greater fear has to be the vulnerabilityof our children and theirs.

To name a few, we have narcicist, absolute psychopaths, people who would not know the truth if it smacked them in the face, and those who cannot live without a smidge of drama tatooed across their buttocks. So when younger people bring up trust issues, more and more,I am leaning toward wanting to tell them that it is almost impossible to trust anyone,  especially when beautiful young and vulnerable women are in the market for friendships which may bear the burden of longing for genuine companionship.  The cyberworld has taken us to the stars while the truth is that the best we may ever know of someone is down the street and around the corner.  It stands true for men and older boys as well that maybe their is a harbor you are longing to reach, for you think it has got to be new and better; But sometimes, look homeward.

I can tell as I go through many of these Xanga writings that from coast to coast — region to region, and from the things which we say we enjoy, that small regional familiarity foreign to others only a few hundred miles up the road means a whole lot.  Wealth in some areas happens to be the equivalent of middle class in the other, and the poor are treated differently according to the tennants of a church’s background.  Some are satisfied with giving to folks who have no intention of pulling themselves up by boot straps, while others, from the very beginning are making certain that those who come know that something is expected of them, and I have deep and abiding respect for those with some structure, not that I want the hungry turned away, but people build pride deep within when suddenly they learn that they have gifts, and to steal a phrase, “Those gifts bear fruit.

Our jails were a lot more empty when highways were being  built by prison labor, and yes; Many prisoners in the old days made license plates, so that is how that came in to being as a joke or threat about the potential for a person’s life.  I am told that the one thing you do not want to take in to unemployment counselors is a place where there are years where you can account or show that you did nothing but to sit and to wait.  I would be an untouchable in India, for hosputal labor required me to deal with body fluids and to take care of things no one else wanted to touch.  Get a life!  Not a one of us is beneath taking care of the most needy and desparate among us.  So one loses a job as a computer programmer, going out and washing windows and calling yourself an independent business person has more credibility than sitting on your can sending out resumes to 2000 places where they are apt to wind up in the, “Inactive Files.”  One can tell a lot about a person who goes out and makes the best of a horrible situation but who comes home at the end of the day having contributed something.

Does any one care that I have written many blogs recently when the pool of blogs is deeper than a well of water after a monsoon — Probably not, but if one person finds something which speaks to their lives, then my time is not in vein; So how had I locked many non-Xangans out of the pool, then I do not know, for I want to trust that if someone comes and reads something which I have written, then they and I shall have grown from the experience.  I have been led down a yellow brick road by about less times than I have fingers over my years with Xanga, and there is no way possible to give all of you the time and the attention which you truely deserve; But if you think I should check out a post, because it will speak to me, then let me know, because that is the way that I will find friends along the way.

Sometimes, people disappear on Xanga, as if one day they were a friend, and the next day they decided they were a little tire of your stories, so they move on to another place.  Year in and year out of your life, you will meet this kind of person, but no, great friends do not disappear.  They may move to another place, but they are out there.  For every one who has come along through my journey of writing, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” and have been here to share the angst, the awards, the hope still before me, then I want to thank you with all of my heart.  Now that book clubs are picking it up through Kindle, then I believe we are going into a whole different phase this year, and another book is beginning to formulate in a career which I started really late unless you look at my early years, so once more; I thank you all who gave me the courage, and for those who have been beat up by the new world and its instant book service, then believe not that anyone has carried me anywhere, for I have begged for help from the beginning, and I still do.  But some people are hurt, for their quest has now had the shawdows of success which I have had; So you must believe this that without A National Name or Producer, I have worked most days for three yeaars, never letting the sun set on what I believed in — A book whose time had come, and people who deserved to be known,  those I left behind as a girl.

Trust first in something higher than yourself or than you or I; Trust next that from every bend along the way, then you shall learn more, but trust is fragile, and to endure and to not see it shattered; Then listen to every sound outside of your heart, and return it slowly when you have examined it like a fine prcelain, or the injured feeling in the eye you cannot pin point, and you will have begun to know that a time has come to invite someone or something in or to say without too many words the sad farewell from which healing will come.

Blessings, Barbara Everett Heintz, Aurhor of Amazon/s “Pinkhoneysuckle,” KDP – Kindle Ready, Hardback or soft cover as well as long time Xanga Blogger of Pinkhoneysuckle

I am so very tired of so-called women’s magazines filled with getting the most out of your orgasms, And I am tired of seeing way too young girls picking out their g – string underpants from off the stores shelf while mothers are thinking their daughters are going through a phase — Phase of what?  Their so overwhelmed with sexual information by the fifth grade that they can tell you all about oral sex and blow jobs.  I see groups of women from Atlanta to Cincinnati to back home in San Francisco who starve themselves and then buy fake breast, and as if that was not sad enough, then now we have the perfectly curved rear end underpants to get that; “Want to feel a real butt look!”

Women worry, bathe, preen, get the new season’s make-ups throwing away hundreds of dollars of colors which they have liked and chosed;  But, Holy Mother of God, someone is going to notice that you are wearing sun colors when you are supposed to be in the silver and grey with that flash of pink to give your eyes that perfect, “Come hither look.”  Now that is a crisis that you must kick your best buddy to get this gal to the powder room to not screw up the illusions at this table as the first round of tinis are ordered, but everyone is dressed to the nines, and their feet are already so screwed up from high heels that they have bunions which look like tumors on their feet.

Some are fidgeting with cell phones while others play with the cute ballons left on the table so you could stick your finger through them to give that little insertion cue or practice blowing them up, because it is time to get hammered, to get up on the dance floor in a little while, to express yourselves in girations just preening and waiting for some guy to notice you, becuase the rest of the week, your phone calls, your texting, and; “Oh my God!” — Your days getting through the week are going to be about whether those certain guys a couple of you hot ladies left with; “Do you think they’ll show up for the next night out,” or will they go to some other club to meet up with some other vulnerable ladies?  And the conversation goes, “And he goes,” and then we go, and — Well like, we all go on  as to whether this was the real thing?”  “Ya think?” “Like I do; I really do,” and no one has said one damned meaningful thing during the whole conversation.  People who actually finished college and have graduate school credentials go through these acts under the big tents all over the country, for at first your most important significant others are your parents or some appointed stand in for such, then it is your girlfriends.

There are exceptions, girls with heads on their shoulders, who know, see, and endeavor to live a more meaningful life, but I am not kidding.  In my years of living, I want to lie down and cry in shame for where our women are now.  Beginning sometime in the 1960s with people like me, we started listening to the litany of many old hags like Betty Friedan, and the bras came off, birth control gave people the one night stand ritual, and it was going to be a world of equality between men and women, but  meanwhile, we would see men getting the idea that sex and a relationship meant leaving your pants over a chair in the corner of someone’s house where every room was filled with other party goers, for the party was more of the way then of hooking up with the opposite sex.

For a friend, I am repeating some of our sins.  We wanted equal pay for equal work, the ability to compete with men in the college classroom, not to be aced out by them, because women were apt to drop out and have babies.  We hoped that we might get some help at home, even if we were merely going to be housewives and mothers — An evening out with our husbands, a time which was not 24 hour child care, so that meant getting deeper in to the work force.  We mainly wanted to feel valued as the young wives we were, but something went terribly wrong.

Suddenly, we were hearing about the swingers, the drop your keys in a bowl and see whose husband you were going home with tonight if you were drunk enough or crude enough to do such a thing, and suddenly our morals began to suck in the worst way, and we had no road maps for rebuilding the families we were going to bring in to this world; For believe me — Women my age were sent out there to find a man and to crank out the kids.  Next AIDS, the behind the scenes teacher/priest and others in the hierarchy of taking care of young men were converting these same boys and mens in to a homosexual lifestyle, and right here and right now, I want to say before you all get your undies in a wad; “Yes, some people were born with homosexual tendencies,” but you never met the whole generation of mainly young men who died from a diesease called AIDS.  I will believe until the day I die that AIDS damage could have been limited had there not been so much pressure in Washington not to call it a gay man’s disease, so for the first time in history, you had a diesease out here which was brand new, being passed from male to male, drug user to drug user, and on to wives, because from day one when it was recognized on the West Coast and The East Coast;  No one cried out quarantine — For you do not want it to be associated with sexuality and certainly not as a gay man’s disease, because it could have been dangerous to have been closing doors and putting big AIDS signs on them.

This led to the first decade of absolutely open discussion about homosexuality, and even though a whole generation of gay men is missing around my age here in The San Fraancisco Bay Area, for they got new homes, either in graves back in their hometowns, burials at sea by The Neptune Society, or if you want to go to a place where tears will wash down to your feet, then go to The San Francisco Columbarium, and read the love letters, and I know these men, boys — A lot of them loved with their whole heart, but AIDS, a disease of animals had crossed over in to man, and it was deadly, a war zone, a nightmare with no end until the triple cocktail of meds gave back many people their lives; so it is a managable disease now, and Oh yes, it is no longer a gay man’s diesease.  An unintended consequence of all of this though was it so educated younger people about homosexual life that  more and more people decided that was the way to go, for you immediately became accepted in a group who had gone through the killing fields together, and now they were going to welcome you with open arms.

So the women too, even though the girls all say they were born gay decided to give it a try as well, for it was certainly better than dead beat boyfriends who hurt them over and over again, for with birth control — The married guys could step out, and travel and work made couples of many workers who spent more time with each other than they did at home.  The ladies, especially those who had experienced abuse themselves, who had been left more times to cry in their crumpled sheets got the message that a good guide for them through sex could be another woman, and after they woke up with them the next day, then it seemed easier than battling for the male species who, because of the laws of nature, had all of the parts to impregnate them.  It only took a few decades to get the sperm donor sites, the implantation of the sperm and egg, and even though it is costly and the future is going to have its own consequences when extremely popular sperm donors can put out a good 50 donations, it will not be my world to deal with when new generations must be tested to make certain brothers and sisters are not marrying each other.  But that time is coming; And then what?  I cannot speak for you but it would be a devestating event in my life, and when you are young and really feel in love, then all good sense is blown out of the window.  A very dangerous deck of cards is in a clean box on the table, and you will remember some disgruntled lady writing about it on Xanga.

Now we come to something with which women, especially, again — Are bearing most of the load, and it is the beautiful and romantic hearts who want what might have been their mothers and family’s traditional relationships.  Yes, the girls do go in search, and I think of it as almost, “Packs,” now with a few which will be chosen by some men who have a fondness for something which seems like one has taken out of an old romance novel, only do you know how some of those novels were written?  They were written, for the writer could draw from their own longings and feelings or from the stories people would share, but there was usually a happy ending.  Women’s equality led to great inequality of relationships which would bear family life.  I am a sweet freak, and I want you to look over at that table, for tonight alone there are at least 50 desserts, and next week I am going to come back and have another hell of a time choosing from that black satin chocolate cake or that vanilla cream pie with sweet coconut to nibble and savor, to eat — You get the picture.

Women who want traditional love, and even many men are taken for the naieve souls they are far too often, and I am so sick and tired of seeing people hurt, both women and men, for the; “How To Relationship Books,” most are a crock.  I can go in to any thrift store and find enough copies of how to live your love life, and they are there for a good reason, because every relationship is defferent, and one’s advice is about as good as writing a letter to, “Dear Abby,” for we have lost all sense of responsibility to one another.  Begin at grade one teaching a child how their behavior impacts another child, and when you are giving those sex ed classes, then throw in a few chapters about, “Feelings,” and help children learn early that just as they do not like to be hurt,  it is important to examine how others are broken just like you. Let them know that all things have meaning – Hugs, the kissing they begin to experiment with, and let them hear from people about broken homes, how children feel sad if a parent leaves one day and just visits.  If there is hope for any kind of marriages to work, then the first priority is to share the expectations of each party, and somehow could we please get this, ‘Love Making,” changed to some other term when you go in to it with a clue that it is just naked over blown sex, and “I will  not be here in the morning, for that is not love whatsoever, and you deal with the reality that you are giving the most intimate part of your being to someone who would have probably nailed the first sheep out in the pastures before written time.  That is very raw, and I am so sorry, but that is what having no rules and this so-called equality has done to those who long to be involved in romantic love.

Young men and young women, I am so sorry, for we have fully made your lives miserable, because we did not take nature, what was beautiful and romantic about the old ways, and we did not show you the importance of choosing partners if you are interested in long term relationships.  How many little girls still play bride, and how many little boys are taught to play casual games which involve family, for that was the way children began to learn about being a part of a normal cycle which began long before women’s liberation.  You poor souls do not seem liberated from anything, but you are fearful about getting out there again, and I am so sorry to tell you that in their way, because guys often just want the physical and not the emotional commitment; Women have become more and more victims of narcicistic males with the, “You know you want it attitude,”  and if you do, “Want it,” then make certain you understand what you were offered.

What I have not done is what to do about all of this torment, of feeling that the best you’ll  ever have is another choice which could easily take your youth and leave you wanting, and I have not addressed this, because I see it, again, as something which I despise, but I just do not have a life time to preach to every younng girl that it is normal to want to play house, to admire your fathers, to believe that you might want a Grandmother’s wedding ring, and to fall in the arms of a partner, a husband, that which nature gave you all the right parts to blend with for making a child.  You are not backword, stupid, out of line with your expectations;  But how can you begin to help yourself this very day to learn trust and to be aware of inflated egos who want nothing but “Barbie Dolls,” for sex — starving Barbies who are younger than you when your maturity is at full fruition.

It must begin with women knowing that they will rarely find a mate out bar crawling for the week-end rituals.  It must move back somewhere to the willingness to share with people pure and open conversation, and there needs to be some national effort on to show women that empowerment was not fully a bedroom issue.  Were I younger, I think I would be writing about how overt sexual freedom has led, especially women, in to a place where the big lie of equality was addressed poorly.  You did not need a coat and tie, a big cigar to smoke, and to be an expert on single malt scotches, but if that was your choice to hang out with the big boys, then you might have lost the ability to help men tell you about themselves, and there are those who want exactly what you want, who do not know how to get it, and I would say that your first sign that a relationship will never work is when conversation just draws blank stairs. If you cannot have a decent conversation from day one; You are screwed.

Lastly, if I could rule the world, I would know that men and women have different roles to play.  Do not give your precious self away to another man who cannot share in the dance of romance, so as old fashined as it sounds, then make your body count for something other than just a fellow’s challenge to, “Get laid.”  I have purposefully, again, left religious issues out of this as a gold standard, for not all of you are religious; But you are a body, a soul, and a spirit in my eyes, and you deserve a better world.  You deserve children, a caring husband; No, you are not corny or a fucked up female because you want what women until the mid 20th century thought of as what would be a happy life, and perhaps the people who trouble me most are those who just fail to have a clue that such women as you are on to something — That when we have thrown away the best of what was a right of passage and the heritage of so many, the most special humaness of wanting one partner, something which separated us from lower animals, then we may need to go back and fix a few things.  I have the feeling that if women staged a new rebellion, then it might be heard by men that your bodies are worth as much as your minds, and no I do not believe for one minute that if all women became celibate for a time, then men would learn the courting rituals again, but could it be that all women are better than a one night stand?  I believe that you are, and far too good for trust to be broken over and over again.  Take some time young women, and begin a new conversation, for our tired old ways which we introduced have made your lives hell, and we never meant for that to happen.

God Bless, Barbara Everett Heintz, Author of “Pinkhoneysuckle,” the book on Amazon with 2012 Awards in San Francisco and #1 in my division of The Hollywood Book Festival 2012 – Kindle Ready

Barb, Xanga Blogger of, Pinkhoneysuckle

Holy Lord;  I do not know how a sweet Alabama aunt, back in the days when women did not curse — Much — could make the strong man desperate for some low T therapy then, and the sweet ladies with their Sunday gloves and flowery hats need to run home and cut their visits short, for my beloved Aunt Inez could say, “Shit Fire,” chew her gum or dip her stuff, and iron a shirt on a good day never questioning that she might be speaking a phrase which a child could get smacked out of school for saying — After the paddling, before you walked home, and the neighbors had turned the party line in to the news, “That little nasty Barbara Everett said, the — You know what, but I am going to tell you just in case you haven’t heard about it; those horrible words we don’t say around here in Tennessee, “Shit fire!” So after I got home, Mama was waiting, switch in hand, bar of soap at the wash pan, and I was in for the whipping I was not going to forget afterI had already been whipped senseless.

One thinks, as a child, that my aunt had some reason for saying the phrase on a regular basis, and I loved her dearly, for she allowed me and her wonderful daughter a little younger than me primp with her lipstick, her high heels, and she never scolded me for a thing in my life, and after we moved to Tennessee, my great joy would be to return to her house, sit by the fire, and to have my precious Uncle and her husband come in at days end. All of the love that seemed to pour out for me may not have been what life was about most times around there, for Uncle had a problem with whiskey, but you have your mean drunks and your mellow sort, and he seemed to be among the most mellow man that I ever knew throughout the few years I would get to know him, for he and my Aunt Inez, by all measure, seemed to depart this life too soon, for theirs was a joyful place which I envied, and about now, a breeze is blowing across Sand Mountain, and a voice is whispering, for it is the way of angels, “Well, “Shit Fire,” How could anyone have thought such about a woman, two children next to an old garage where my uncle fixed cars between bouts of whiskey drinking and man talk — Could have ever considered that cold house a nice among the nicest places of their memories, but the last Christmas I would spend with my beloved aunt holding me in her arms to this day finds me fixated on that hamlet of my birth, Rosalie.

They lived near a church, a garage that fried the best burgers anyone could try to mimic, but it took the gas station’s lard and ground beef, some sweaty guy using a frying pan and day old buns to get just the right flavor, and I want you to understand that ketchup might work on a french frie, but yellow and cheap mustard with enough onions to give gastric innards from miles around a good cleaning left you knowing that you had the food of kings and of queens, and the only company located around the USA which must have gotten some of their info about frying hamburgers is a joiont called Sonic, for there and only there is a near masterpiece for what we had to leave behind in Alabama.  It is no surprise to any of us who were born down south that lard is one heck of a lot better for you than fake butter which was supposed to make folks skinnier as well as to be so much better for you, for it was new, and the pretty housewives at the refrigerators had on dresses and high heels where as we who knew our lard; Well, drippings did not have that ring to it that margarine had; but in my aunts lovely home, I was exposed to what I would think of as fine restaurant fare, for I was never in the gas station!

The last Christmas I ever spent at her house would be one of those weeks when I got to stay the whole week and just to be a child.  I did not mention that a couple of houses near this home of Uncle Homer and Aunt Inez, along with a school, a church within walking distance, and a few stray dogs looking for a meal made this count as a real town, and the eldest daughter was a high school football queen, but she was one with high moral values, so each day she would play a piano which her folks  decided to afford for her, because she was a woman of exceptional musical talents who could just sit down and play from hymnals or some old songs of long ago to please her family without much more than having heard of it before.  Most of the music was played at a very rapid and up tempo though, and great Evangelicals can make any song wake the dead much less those who are just sleeping.

That year I Christmas I would hear, “Joy To The World,” played and sang with such vigor that I would wonder how anyone could make a keyboard get up and walk and everyone in the room dance, because it does not sound like the music to which I was accustomed, so may I just say that there is no way that Elvis could have been a part of a sing-a-long, for my cousin, Ronwyn took a back seat to no one.  We called her Ronnie, and she was a family beauty which would resign her to being called from the mountain early on by one, Dr. Dunn, as he was known, and he came to preach, but he would leave with my cousin as his wife, and they were headed for California where they grew prunes or olives or whatever it was they grew near an area called Yolo, and for the life of me I could not figure out why my cousin had to farm with a physician husband, but I did not know that some people go through appropriate channels and become, “Doctors of Religion,” and these same folks cannot make a living without some other means of support, but my cousin was so beautiful that I am certain more men than one desired to know her, but I did not know about all of those goings on back then, and I still see that beautiful young girl doing, “Joy To The World,” with such vigor that I thought it was a new rag time version.

I saw some big faux candy canes on a brilliant and clever Xanga woman’s header when I began to think how Christmas, and last year, and all of time right now appears to be moving on at a speed which is hard for me to bear.  When I became very ill in 2012, I felt that life was getting away from me, for all of that Christmas was a blur, and then, again this December I missed out on all of my decorating, the great joys of going through stores and picking out gifts which is among my favorite things to do, to celebrate what once for me, a burger from a gas station as a treat, so six more days of hospital care was not how I planned for my year to end.  It was among the first times when I really used the internet for shopping, and the seriously flawed me would come out when I seemed to want two of everything, and then there’s; “Well that is such a bargain, then I should buy six, for I never know these days when I might have another Holiday season wiped out, and the only good news is now that most of my parts are gone, my children raised, and we are down to one beloved pet, then unless I have a major coronary or brain damage, then most of what causes people to go for operations, then I do not have those parts anymore.

Certainly, Go ahead and snear, you pervert, for you too may be facing needing bionic parts, and for what is gone; Then the pituitary gland does its best to keep us from becoming totally hindered by the lack of a few good hormones, but to the kinder of you, then I too am still not a castrated goat!  But I love Christmas, for it is a season when people pretend to be nicer, and people wish you; “Happy Holidays,” just as one walks down a crowded street, and my heart wants to scream back,  “Merry Christmas, and go, “Shit Fire,” if you do not like the statment, for I would never be so zealous as to defile their days of celebration by scratching out, for instance — Any referral to the lunar New Year, or putting a big nix on a Bat Mitzvah, because it does not suit my sensibilites of the Easter season.  I believe that we should repeal any effort to take away Christian when it comes to the cards we send, and if any store refuses to acknowledge wishing people a Merry Christmas those of us who are admittedly shopping for such; Then it is time we gave the the great big heave ho and shop some place else, for what started out as political correctness has now become censorship of what our little winter Carnival is all about.

The day Christian was seen by corporations as a down side to winter sales was a day when freedom of speech was taken away from a lot of us.  I love winter carnivals, and I love Hannukah, the great Lunar New Year fully celebrated here in the Bay area, and we enjoyed all of the Bat and Bar Mitsvahs ever attended.  I am tired of all of having a country established on the principals taken from scripture and made even more stern by Puritans being re-evaluated for wishing those who may not be one of the flock having to re-examine how we celebrate for fear of associating ourselves with bigotry by using a word which implies a religious belief, because it has gone much too far, and we have kept our mouths shut as the very word, Christmas, has the effect of ruining other children’s lives if the word is said.  In the 1980s in this country, there was growth in Christian worship, and I can safely say that around that period of time was when it began to be important to get that, “Happy Holiday,” card which used to say, “Merry Christmas,” and does any one presume that we had many people who were concerned about new churches cropping up, and if we had problems with it, then we are Nazis, Fascists, Forgetting the plight of The American Indian, and I will end the list there, but you know exactly what I am talking about.

The bigotry has now gone on to other shoes, those who fancy themselves as the utmost intellects who want America to put away its bible culture, for it is not to the liking of certain groups who swollen bigots, their heads so full of their self-rightious opinions.  My friends, life was more pleasant when we lived our lives and did not worry to whom we were going to answer, and I do not want, speaking of hell, fire, and damnation for any priest who was a part of the greatest sex scandal in history as we know it, to have one thought that they deserve similar respect.  They were another group which made it possible to keep murdering churches, and only hell’s fires can be quenched by their actions toward children.  Being taken in to Seminary at a time when everything in them was about to bloom or blunder once was a way for a poor young man to bring honor to a family, but still it does not dampen the sins against the most fragile of human beings — Little children.  We should have a memorial for all of the children of abuse everywhere, and press the children’s name on it with the date they were first injured. A zealous bigot though can only be satisfied until the churches everywhere are murdered.

Yes, Christmas is a religious holiday which falls around the winter solstice when pagans had rights and rituals long before Judaica had records, way before Christ, and other prophets where people would choose the faith of nations, and I thought a lot about these things over Christmas — Everything from, “Should parents have a child’s chemistry checked if a child is showing no sign of being the male or female they appeared to be at birth?”  I asked myself what could be the down side, for once, at least in the country, very mild and feminine males chose to go to the woods and hang themselves, and all knew why, but no one would say the words that the fear of abuse and the torment of class mates called them to the horror of their death, so if those parents had of known how to seek to help their child lose confusion and social abandonment; Again, what are the down sides. It is tyranny to suggest that, “Gay At Birth,” has exceptions to the rule, so who would be barberic enough to suggest that young men and women should have the privilege of having such test done.  I seriously doubted that a female relative wanted to grow a beard in her 40s, but I found out I was incorrect, but we are all subject to the executioner now that hormonal testing is feasible.  We would be subject to even asking boys or girls such feelings in school nurse settings.

I thought about how lonely I felt for my family and the trips back to the old home place. We had nothing, but as the years went along, we, their children, had the privilege of indulging our parents in every way possible at the Christmas celebrations they never knew.  I thought of my Aunt Inez, because she loved me so and how much fun it was to have a Christmas where my beautiful cousin could make that old piano sound like a one woman honky tonk place to come and to worship.  I put away all of my scars which I carried for the Christmas hours, and I held two little grandchildren, my baby dolls as near me as I could with an amazingly large surgical scar I had to protect, and somehow in it all I was able to know that I had another litanny of Christmas memories stamped on my heart;  I just wanted to tell you that Mama needed to be glad Aunt Inez did not catch her beating on me for saying, “Shit Fire,” for it was like the younger people use the F word now — That punctuation mark which keeps any one from falling asleep.

As far as Dr. Dunn and his wife, beautiful Ronwyn; I understand they have gone to be near their children, and Ronnie was the eldest girl cousin, but she raised fine children, helped spread the word she was taught to live, and even though I pictured her as a princess on the landscape of a film, then in many ways, she lived out her dream in California, and we all missed her, for she never came to Tennessee after she left the mountain, so all I have is the memory of my cousin as, “The Highschool Football Queen,” and one Christmas when burgers were cooked the right way in a pan which only a fool would wash, for those windshield wiping towels back then sucked up the grease between a few days of getting the lard just right; And if I do make it to heaven, I want to know how that man made those wonderful burgers and to tell him that Sonic stole his recipe. 

We wait for the real Carnivals to begin all over the known Christian world, the sweetness of St. Valentines is apt to come first, but no longer am I going to wish anyone a, “Happy Holiday,” for they are too easily befriended and looking over that bigotry goes both ways.  Blessings to all who read  this entry, and if you see a great big storm cloud just sitting over your house, then hit the door, for my Aunt Inez might be messing around with the clouds again, and if she gives it just the right touch; then you might get something less pure than rain if you get where I am going with this…

Barbara Everett Heintz, Author of, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” available through Amazon, Kindle, and Create Space, and this, Pinkhoneysuckle, on Xanga

Thanks to some very special folks who shared today that their book club would be using my book to read and discuss.  “Greater love hath no man or woman!