I do not believe that I have ever written a weblog which has had immediate and world wide visitors so rapidly as the article which I wrote about America’s Senior Citizens and the pathetic job market for them.  I need terribly to edit the entire article, but I did write it with my heart in my hand, for I have seen a 75  year old start to clean motel rooms to try to take care of her children and grandchildren.  A very bright man back East who I met through Xanga has had horrible experiences going from place to place job seeking, and when the jobs were filled, a younger and less qualified person would be chosen over a man 50 to 60.  A brother who was a fine machinist worked at Walmart to make ends meet until his retirement money met what was a reasonably good standard of life when his wife decided to take a boyfriend after 40 years of marriage, and he was being nice — giving her his house which he shared with her, not realizing that she would marry within a few weeks after the divorce was finalized.  Otherwise he was in a fifty/fifty state, and that is more and more becoming the standard of divorce in the United States.

A recent movie about seniors who immigrated to India may have predicted a trend before its time — Title not specifically remembered, but; Who could forget the place, “The Marigold Hotel,” for those would hold great potentials for elder Americans.  The problem would be unscrupulous individuals taking dollars and providing no service, and it is a great problem for America that our systems cannot tolerate the flora and fauna, the bacteria, and the viruses found in other locals such as India.

With no disrespect, let us used India for example, for you can have trained doctors from our best schools, Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, for instance, but if you do not have a staff who is meticulously clean, using standard hand washing techniques, and the American training where care settings know individual Universal precautions such as handwashing before you touch anyone, then care settings cannot work.  We are an overly antibiotic use country, so Americans can become deathly ill from any lack of general precautions, and if such care facilities could operate it third world countries — It could be a win win situation.  Medical equipment has to be thrown away which is personal to the patient from any kind of tubing, masks, syringes, and if a cities water supply is dangerous for drinking to its own population, then it is a certainty that it is probably not a good idea to be using it even for bathing.

Yes, we Americans are hung up on the clean thing, the deodorant, no bugs, or varmits running around.  Vermin is not acceptable, nor is the use of cancer causing poisons to kill such things.  I looked at that movie, and I thanked God that I would never have to make so a choice with several children and a planned future, but thousands and thousands of Americans would welcome such an opportunity under the right situation.  The finest diagnostic equipment in the world which is affordable in some third world hospitals is useless if a person with unclean hands comes in and starts and IV, and — Again, this happened to a friend traveling in a third world nation, and the next morning the red streaks of severe infection were running up his arm, so now not only did he have atrial fibrilation; he also had a nosocomal infection that was even more dangerous at that point that the A-fib which was becoming controlled.

If I could send a message to third world countries, then Americans first, fear crime.  After crime would become the fear of becoming ill, so instead of adopting the ways of our West which is so offensive, the eforts to accumulate wealth, then I would hope that third world countries would show that they are taking care of women and children.  Dumping poisons and trash in to rivers and streams and misusing water, the source of life is going to keep nations third world; so perhaps we should be spreading with hope the news that nations may thrive far better by adapting serious world clean up issues, and that means to not just physically clean dirt and trash as well as polution from cities and water ways; It means to show that you can care and clean up your own back log of the poor –  And that begins with one building, getting the population interested , and one by one, by one, the word and pride begins to spread.

Why are Americans so hung up on the problems with dirt, garbage, and the washing of their bodies and clothes?  For us, horrible smells add up to horribly dangerous areas for people to travel.  It takes great leaders, and I know there are great leaders all over the world who can help their people to understand change, the sharing of dollars, and of personal goods begins with the great leaders who note that something as simple as teaching their nation how to control vermin, how to cleanse bodies and clothing, and how to rehab their decaying buildings, but above all to clean up waste, sewage disposal, and the bodies of water which are the staff of all life will help to stamp out elder American’s fears of foreign neighbors.

Great and reasonable leaders are aware that soap, water, clean air, and helping citizens to understand that the discipline of the use of antibacterial products will not only benefit their people for whom they are the torch bearers, but it begins to open more doors for equality of  how and where money may be more widely distributed just by the use of basic inexpensive materials like soap and water.  Yes, I see it as a perfectly logical advent for elder persons with little family to be able to see options around the world, and care begins at the most basic of human needs.  Hear me please, Great Leaders,  and may we see ourself as one earth, the dreamed of global community of mankind.

I beg this of the nations of the world, for your children have great value as citizens in a universe where overall birth rates keep falling in developed nations.  I plant this seed in my heart, and I beg that it will flower across the globe.

Blessings to those who see God work through all nations, to feed the children, to open gates to all nations, and to begin the cleansing of our 3rd world brothers and sisters.  What good have our wars done?  Our first war must be to end poverty at the level where children and women are made slaves, for some few of us as Americans knew similar poverty, but our pride was to make clean the worst that we had.

Blessings, Barbara Everett Heintz, Author of, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” on Amazon, Kindle, and Create Space — A story of America where farmers lived subsistence lives, but even had these lives taken in mid century.  Come to our hidden towns along The Appalachian Trail.  I invite you to read my book, for I believe it helps to know there has been greed in America well in to the 20th century; And our war on drugs has been fruitless compared to the dollars wasted on law enforcement instead of following the example of Denmark where addicts may contribute as workers on methadone programs.

confess that I am among the lucky in more ways than I can count, even as my head aches tonight from the brilliant spring and pollens which fill the San Francisco air, and  at the end of March, I will return to  Ohio where we took a place in a condo building which is older, has highway robbery condo fees because of its age, but our place was owned by a company that kept it so very well, and most people moving in seem to be really going for the low price of larger condos in older buildings and fixing them up to please themselves rather than taking on the double cost of other places with less of a river view.

Am I rich?  We live within our means, but I come from a generation who firmly believed that jewels were a waste of a good dollar, and we are very adept at shopping for most things.  Having given our children most valuable furniture as we sized down or  sending it to an auction; I do believe a robber would be most disappointed, for we even use cell phones that the thugs would be ashamed of carrying out on the street, and as far as a bunch of techy things; since sending attachments is a trial for us, we are better served by the use of our older sound systems which play the music from our lives, and if a criminal had their heard set on CDs which are operatic, high chorale, or the glorious old hymns sung by a choir at Oxford or Cambridge; then danged; you crooks should come to our place.  My husband uses three different remotes as well as the tevlevision, and it is just gauling to me, so for his birthday, then he is getting a universal remote, for I am tired of looking for the blessed things, and madder than hell when he does not swithch back to the TV settings, for I have to go back to the  cable box, use three damned remotes, and somehow, I am able finally to get the news on if he has gone to his men’s club.

We do not keep a lot of money at home, and if you wanted to raid our savings for old age; then you would have to go see our lawyer in Cincinnati to see which account could be tapped in to now, for my husband is a saver to the point that everything is so locked up that we usually have to call the lawyer and the old broker friend if we want to make a real purchase, so all of you thieves out there can really find places where robbing would be a much greater comfort than coming to our place — Then we are gated, have full house alarms, a tenant, vicious dogs up the hill from us which start howling if you look as if you do not belong at the places around here, so this is just not your ideal place to rob.  I would highly recommend that your needs would be better met by going where you might find something worth selling fast, or just forget your life of crime; Go forth and sin no more.

I have heard that pennitenturaries are not very sexy places, and what a waste of life to be behind bars!  I know that as I am compeled to write this that robbers are not apt to be blog sharing folks; so all of this falls on deaf ears, for a criminal is rarely a person who has totally rational motives.  We are supposed to pray for those who are incarcerated, and for minor crimes, then when they are released — Just had to snatch those slim jims and breath mints from a convenience store and got caught with a loaded weapon on the front seat — for instance.  Had this always been an upstanding citizen prior to the arrest, then it would be helpful if more people would have the heart to hire criminals.

The aging population in this country is running in to serious money problems, for either unforseen changes in a work location — A relationship which did not work out, and those pesky kids really do want Mom and Dad’s help when it comes to housing, and the period just after high school when many decide that college is what they have lived to approach.  Life without reporting to parents, coed dorms, and keg parties for four years, and you can put up signs which cue your room mate in to the fact that a special visitor is on board, so go eat a cold pizza left outside of room 13 F, the room where there is always something going on besides dull old preparation for quiz or exams on the next day.  Yes older people feel they owe so much to their children, though the most I ever asked my parents for was forty dollars, and I cried when I had to ask them for that.  Mama was so excited that she was making minimum wage by that time, the $2.25 per hour, and Dad got more than that, but I was ashamed that I asked them for one dime.

Aging people in their early to mid sixties who find themselves unemployed when they really need money coming in go from interview to interview when the pressure is on for income from their family, and  plans they made to retire have not worked, but this is among the groups that are not treasured for past accomplishments, and what I am seeing and hearing from old friends going back in the work force is that it is pure discrimination when it comes between them and the younger person, then there is absolutely no incentive to hire the elder person even if they were the best at what they  did, from banking to hospital administration, to heading a janitorial crew;  They are apt to get the thanks — But no thanks.  About the best a senior citizen can hope for is a minimum wage job in some store selling, for they are jobs the younger people get out of as soon as humanly possible.  Elder folks can find jobs folding clothes in department stores, or the person skilled with the used of tools fits weel in hardware facilities like Lowes.  With a college education, they are apt to be passed over from cleaning services, for the personnel realize that a Grandmother/Grandfather/Parent is apt to have health problems, but it is the social issue also.  Who wants to have to work with someone college educated 30 to 40 years ago, for everyone knows that it is not someone cool, and they are apt to be superior in though to the other employees, and no one wants anyone that might share they have had a life, been educated, and never expected that returning to the work force would be like pulling hen’s teeth.

These are remarks I have heard made about foks in the very age range which I am now; Again, “Thank you God,” for being careful, unless I live to be 120 or my husband longer than that, then we can make it on what we have, and my body has endeavored really hard to wipe me out on more than one occasion.  Now that we know the root problem though, I might get a lot of extra years tacked on, and my husband must have had a cardiac surgeon in 1994 with golden hands, for his cardiac grafts have given him such little problems; so we are not checking out.  But I have heard younger professional people calling our baby boom generation — “Old and smelly,” “Ugly,”  “Ridiculous to think they have sex partners, making gagging sounds while explaining such,” and among my favorites is that, “Older people already had their chance!”  I could make the list longer, but I would assess that you are getting the very ugly picture that older Americans are facing heavy discrimination in the work force.  So the question arises; “What can be done about all of this?”

Bwho qualify for no disability.  I would talk with everyone that I knew about their work place and how many people on the work force are over 60 years of age.  I would take a meanial job in the interim — whatever I could get, for the worst thing is to do nothing or to worry yourself to death.  But it is time that age discrimination is brought out and in to the open, and ladies and gentlemen; The activist who brought great changes in laws which affected voting rights for people of color in 1965 are now the older people who need the confidence and the support of each other to begin addressing age discrimination as the demon which it surely is.  I am hearing of more and more cases where this is a pertinent issue, and for many it is not a matter of wanting the lap of luxury;  It is that our generation, for the most part, was brought up to believe that honest and hard work was what had built this country, and once the marching shoes came off, then this same age group hit the work force, but many are solidly cut out, because technology and computer skills are like learning a brand new language

But who will begin the conversation?  It takes some heart for older lawyers to come down from high places to look at so many people who are victims of the challenge to make more money, and no we plans; “When I am older, I want young people to remark that I stink, that I have had my turn, and I thought the money was going to last longer.”  People do not see late years of marriage falling apart, nor can they be lucky enough to predict that health care — Or lack of it now, is so expensive that Social Security which they paid in to does not come close to meeting the needs of a family where ill health pops up and starts eating  away at the next egg which they had built for their family.  Who would guess their husband or wife was in a battle with cancer, and out of pocket care was the only way their type of cancer could be dealt with at an institution not part of the network.  Marriages are ever fragile, and with longevity many married couples are finding themselves at a crossroads after 30 or 40 years of marriage, and the young can say something about old geizers not deserving to work out problems with each other, but when children have left home, you’ve both worked for years to see the kids had the best, but along the way what did not get nourished was the marriage — And yes, we old geizers really enjoy companionship, and we are not among them, but it is a horrible thing for people to wake up and to know they are living with a stranger, because the children were the bond, and you talked about work, but strangers are not always able to mend lost years, and some are so desperate that leaving the marriage seems to be the only soloution.

We can all look at it and think; “Well, all you are looking at is a death bed, so why ever would you leave a marriage at that age,” for younger folks are going to be together for ever and ever!”  It may not be practical, but we are somehow guaranteed that all of us irregardless of age are entitled to, “The pursuit of happiness,” so if you did not get that out of the forefather’s plan, then you need to hit the history books once more.  Our Pledge of Allegance to this nation is rather outspoken regarding such a liberty, and I am not encouraging anyone to get out of a marriage, for it is a sacred bond isn’t it? Tell that to the young adults who divorce within the first five years, look at that statistic, and kiss where the sun does not shine if you believe elder people are not entitled to happiness or the pursuit of such as well spelled out by the founding fathers;  Then, you are either plain stupid, or had plugs in your ears when The Pledge of Allegance was learned in your schools.  Part of citizenship for non nationals includes learning our most basic of rights, and those who are born here have been miserably failed by any school system which does not teach basic Civics.

I hurt for these troubled older people, and I lay my heart out to anyone who is in such a predicament.  I do feel that people make snap wrong decisions which they will regret later when they are troubled.  Depression is a growing problem of mature citizens, and many fall in to social isolation, and some even end their lives feeling that when or if they have no control over their lives, then it is a way out, and it is “Youth Worship,” which is the level of advertising, sales ptches, and does anyone think it is an accident that evening news features adds for hemmerhoids and Depends which is actually insulting to aging individuals.  Yes these things may be part of where our lives are headed,  but we purchase a whole lot of things which have nothing to do with gas, bloating, bowel, urione, and other private functions.  Would it not be advisable to advertise, for instance, if we who are growing older are the evening news watchers to share the adverising of food, vitamins and minerals, beautiful women who are older with fresh washed faces enjoying the afternoon with friends in a garden.  FGS, At least give us a shot a miracle grow, and as people gloat over the skin on my face, I can tell you that I was and still am a Noxema girl with a little Estee Lauder come the night, but there are people 35  who have worse skin than me.  Just give us a break; will you not dear worshippers of the youth culture.  We have not signed on to check out of here yet.

I have few credentials to give employment advice, for it is not part of my education.  I do have a lot of education, but what I tell unemployed seniors is what I have written.  Do not stay unemployed even if you have to suck in all of your pride.  You owe not one child a free ride for college, for most students with whom I went to school who were the party crowd took their education the least seriously, while those who worked seemed to put their hearts in to it.  It means more when you are helping parents pay the tab.  I also ask people to list all which they have done and like to do and to see if there is a way of making a living as a creative self employed person.  What do you do well which only you can provide that is legal and which can bring in needed income.  This is an area where many folks just do not think to go — Their passion, the gifts which they have learned, then see in your community if you can become a paid tutor, and get some help setting up a small business.  One of my sisters is gifted in taking care of elder persons — the genuinely elder people who have infirmities, and her work is providing them with the service she learned through taking care of her husband as he was dying from Huntington’s Disease, helping Tennessee actually get a program in order which should be a model for the nation for mentally impaired citizens for whom living alone is impossible, and the program is, “Tennessee Cares,” but she does this work out of love, and the fact it has provided her with income is her eternal gift.  She could easily become an advisor to many familes with disabilities, but she has all the work she can do now with a beloved friend who knows her situation and whose family is 3000 miles away, so she does make some income in this situation, for the friend is coherent, and knows she is the lifeline.

Dear ones who are without work, and you yourself feel fully unable to work, then seek help from whatever community social services are available.  You are special, and if one looks around, there are lines of care in this country — Not enough for the aged, the infirmed, and the oldest citizens, but learn all that is available to you, for those of us who can;  We are quiet givers, and we support with the few dollars we can.  It is time that the Billionaire networks takes a look at the poverty among the elderly of America and be hand led to situations such as one aunt whom I bless has taken on tow little girls a drug addicted grandaughter brought in to the family.  The same girl had four other children;  So these are great societal misortunes, and other problems within the family structure makes one fear to get involved.  Angels have come in to the lives of two of the oldest of the six children, and their Great Grandmother, until now, was most of the care they had ever known.

Know your angels, for there are people who want to help, but they do not realize the extent of problems.  We are all capable of losing all that we have in a moment, and for the younger people; I can promise you that Mark Twain’s comment that the two things which certain are, “Death and Taxes,” will greet you in your life, and in your years; sometimes you long for time to move on, and the misfortune is that longing, for after middle age life is so filled from year to year with all that you need to do vs. all that you ought to do, and you too will be in the exact place many of the elderly are right now.

I set a goal to do a couple of articles about the subject of aging individuals, and I feel as if I have placed my heart in what I have written.  I am well aware that there will be few readers, that younger people cannot relate to the situation, for it is the way of youth to guard your fear of becoming old, so you isolate yourself from people as young as 50 who feel every emotion which you do and have from the time you hit late puberty or finished high school.  I live wanting to impact lives for the better, even my own and my family’s, but I need to raise the issue for one more time; “We need to be walking and talking about the aging of America,” for it is here.  We face challenges which are larger than some can bear, but we began our adult lives seeking change and with the hope of civil rights.  May as much passion be shown to the elderly for civil justice as has been shown for the GLBT communities, for we are a large body of people, and if we brought mercy to those who were me, the poorest, to people of color, and The Supreme courts have addressed many diverse issues, so with passion;   “Who will stand up and be the torch bearers for older citizens in this country who need Jobs?

We need powerful people to step forward, and when you do, then we are going to march along right behind you for those of us whose burdens are not being taking seriously anywhere from the halls of Congress to the 60 year old pounding the pavement with swollen feat, for our bodies do age, but we still have skills, so for those who need it; Let the justice begin to flow like the waters over this land, and once more prove America actually does care about the civil rights of every citizen.

God Bless All Who Seek Employment

I Am Counting On A Ground Swell; I am, Barbara Everett Heintz, Author of, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” Amazon, Kindle, Create Space, and Winner of 2012 Book Festival Awards — HM in San Francisco, and 1st Place in Hollywood; A story of the uncivered Diaspora of The Southern Appalachians, One Woman’s Journey   

I  have worked enough computer hours to pretend that I have two full time jobs, for this is my trial and tribulation, the sad nature of a woman who, went around my sons and daughters who would finish nursing just in time to sit in front of the computer and to make idiots of their father and I as we marveled at accomplished technical skills.  When you have to ask five year olds to clue you in, then an awareness that the new world is at hand, that you are headed for aa technology crisis, somewhat like being the last mule on a share cropper’s farm when someone drives up with a tractor which could turn the earth despite bolders the size of  two ton elephants without the snout — One goes out to pasture, kisses the pens and pencils farewell — And if it is your luck to own the mule, then you can lie down and chew on straw or roll in the hay, metaphorically speaking, of course.

I endeavored, and I accomplished placing the pictures, many of which are in my book, “Pinkhoneysucle, on my weblog pictures as well as the Xanga picture album, because I thought it might give more of a sense to readers of how the book with generations explained, for various roles in Appalachian life, Southern Bible Belt ideals, and show the progression of a woman’s life, for I took much of, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” from the deepest dark place where I had to go endeavoring to convince you that A Diaspora occured  in America in the mid century. Front line soldiers who made it back were caught up in it, as well as all poor farmers in their overalls had to head North, and no one has bothered to bring it to the attention of the American people, because if you think we are a bunch of, “White Trash,” then should you be bothered.  Pictures, I thought;  these folks need pictures to get the idea of where this story is going to lead them.  See the pictures, please, and I will someday let you guess how many hours it took me to get these in order.  I am sorry the quality is poor, but you know that thos pixels were not born back then in the 60s and 70s, and I saw Berkeley’s great big computer room, when a computer required a building, and those punnch card gals;  Where was their place in history.

Next up,  I purposefully deleted my template or let us call it, the header which embarrassed me to death, and with my,  “Computer’s for Dummies,” I endeavored piece by piece to replace that SOB, and I wound up on some craft book site signing in, flicker, other related companies, and I may have  accidentally bought a car trying to replace my header, and I wanted it to knock your socks off, but right now my blog is a headless horse, and it is apt to stay that way until I get back to my river town this summer and let my computer programmer do his magic — Swirling pinkhoneysuckles and swaying southern pines with the golden needles of past seasons carpeting the forest floor, three sisters gathering flowers by the armload to take to Mama;  I wanted that header really badly. but Microsoft crashed in our area, and in addition to that between joining art schools, craft pledges, and God knows what else; Now I have no template at all!

I have now come to late evening, and in the hallway, I saw a black spider climbing up the wall, so I think this is the sign which I needed that these books are useless, that whoever wrote them sucks, and when I get back to the hallway as perturbed as I am now, I am going to smack the sweet innards out of that spider, and realize that I may be a computer pathetic and hopeless case, but I can still whack the big guys!

I should list the good things my mother in law did for me, how you could wash dishes with that material which was used a lot in can can slips or to make the white neeting for church hats or Easter bonnets.  I know that little, if anything, ever gets discarded, which is among the reasons I go through my things almost every year and send everything to a store which somehow serves mentally disabled persons down in the Mission area.  I admired that she would spend hours with our children to make the perfect thank you cards for the aunts who would give them little presents of money on their birthdays, and that she was able to amuse herself never spending a dime on a new piece of clothing, except she must have had to make at least one order of underwear in those 35 or so years, but I would not swear to that.

Living in what was her house and is now ours sometimes makes my skin crawl, for I can see her, or I automatically do something just like her in the kitchen, but she and I were as different as if were a Queen of Hearts, and I had come out of the fields of China, a peasant, latched on to my husband’s leg one day and would not let him go. I would talk with her in the early mornings when I was nursing my babies, for she was always up between four and five, and the sound echoes in this house.  Were it empty, I think it might have less personality than a very large barn except or the view, for my pictures of a great remodel only came to pass in the kitchen which is as modern as most of years, but I did not have room for the pot filler feature, and a wine fridge was out, not such a deal in San Francisco, since there are very few ways of steaming head.

My readers may remember this story, that on my very first visit, she informed me that this family does not hug, and I should have heard the words as cautionary, but my husband and I were so young then, I had no problems getting hugs, for it was something I never turned down, and only after about two or three children were born would I realize that all hugs ended in passion, and even if I was not in the mood for passion and the feel of my body fully given, this was usually the response, so I went along for years where I never felt under hugged, quite the contrary,  I do admit that I could make things happen with as much lust as the Madam or a house dedicated to the satisfaction of men, and if you were a 70s woman, then you know that was during the time of all the expert books from anything you were afraid to ask, to refreshing one’s techniques with a chaper from The kama Sutra, “Fear of Flying,” and who could forget Marlon Brandon and, “Last Tango In Paris.”  It was more free out here for the homo sexual crowd,  but for straight people it was a time of Testosterone flowing from ceilings, because, for the first time, a woman could put her arms around her man, for we had written permission to drive them to depths of desire they did not even know they had.  I hear lesbians talking a lot about, “Girl Power,” and I want sometimes to say that I am convinced that new sexuality was at its peak with men and women sharing heightened sexual awareness together, for women learned how, and we were not afraid to take our beautiful men to the stars, and we wanted to get there with them.

We had rules — You will do nothing which hurts, and many of us found the greatest gift in sheere male superior sexual positions, for we are sort of built as such that fit is just right for reproduction — What we were born on this earth for in the first place, that we — the highest of the mammals, even us, we had a time and a season which went on somewhere around 28 years before women’s ovaries just were not going to put out those eggs any more, and most women are like cats in hear near periods of ovulation, for nature is saying, “Make us a baby,” and to say women are in peak child bearing years at age 27 may be text book, but you still are going to be contributing eggs for several more years after that, and I can say for certain a lot of women at 42 to 45, if careless or just baby hungry can wind up with little babies shrieking, “Milk Time,” enough to awaken the dead if they are not well protected from pregnancy.  We always like to have romantic evenings, and do we have phermones; We seem to, for our bodies perspire more, and genitalia naturally lubricates during child bearing years.  Surely you’ve noticed that lubricants get extra news time along with viagra on the evening news, for who watches the evening news.  We people who are older with time on our hands.  It is not geared to young people in heat, and that is for certain.

But my mother in law said, “We do not hug in this family,”  and as the days of great passion have come in to days that are hardly yours to know about, but people getting older still make love, but things become planned, and the script is written, the understanding, and if you do not know what the person likes by this time, then you are probably out of the relationship anyway; but the idea of, “Hugs,” would haunt me, for I did not know how tragically my husband would fall in to the pathetic affection category with age, and he is indeed, a really ackward hugger; One quick arms around me, a brief kiss if we have not seen each other for awhile,  And, you get the picture that my over bearing mother in law was absolutely right.

I have one male friend with whom we share lunch some times, and he is wonderfully taller than me, and has great arms.  He holds we closely, for I have known him for about 38 of my years, both of us in health care, and I find myself, not so much turning back in to the days of, “Last Tango,” but I just want him to hold me right there, so that I can hear his heart beat, and I can feel so very warm, but he is Methodist, and his Mama raised him to do the right thing, to let it go at that, but I can even remember other men who simply had this wonderful way of holding all of me in their arms, and you can believe it or not, but you could probably hand me an old coat of theirs, and I could pick who it belonged to, way back when, blindfolded.

So if you are young and in love, and note that most hugs are associated with sex, then meet their Mothers, find out about the loving ways of the family, and if your mother in law tells you; “We are not a hugging family,” ou need to then you need to decide then and there what you are willing to live with those other years of your life.  But you listen, and remember my story,  and unless you’re comfortable with zero romanticism after the season of youth have faded, then you just might want to file your nails, look up at the moon and stars which will still be the same ones shining down when health is failing, when aches just happen, and when you go to sleep – Yes think about it, and talk with your loved one about the cold family way and that is upsetting.  If he can hold you in his arms, and make you feel like you want to crawl in to his waiting arms forever, then you may have lucked out.

If he breezes over it, and does not want to embarrass Mom too much by holding you in his arms or holding your hands with people around, then you just might want to polish those nails and hit the road.  You cannot change the person, but you can make a more informed choice.  We had the babies, and we take care of each other in sickness or health, but I am missing out on another special part of growing older.  I also will see his mother comin g out of walls, mending in the kitchen, or bringing us in her parlor on auntie visit day, so I love with the warning, and I walked the path thus far, so I am not apt to start looking for anything else at this point, so I count the other gifts, marvel at the first blooms of springtime and remember the hours when we were both on fire.

Barbara Everett Heintz, “
“Pinkhoneysuckle.” Book on Amazon and Kindle — Pinkhoneysuckle, The Blog onXanga
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In Tennessee when I was a child, we never got this day off from school, and the only way I knew that it was a Holiday was that my dear friend, Betty, had a mother who worked for NASA — This precious mother who was up every morning at 4AM to get a ride to Huntsville, Alabama, because she was smart, and then there was not a large interstate between us and Huntsville.  I knew what it was like to get up that early, for when Mama was in what appeared to be a manic phase, she insisted that we get all the evening chores done, would not allow us to do homework, and she would give us whatever there was to eat after which there was a clean up, and sometimes, especially on summer nights, I would cry, for it was light outside and I knew other families did not live as we lived, and I would hope Daddy was home, but when the Southern Diaspora fell, he could only tit home from the Chicago brick yard where he shoveled a whole lot of straw at Tuthill brick yard, so he could send money home for us to try to hold on to our farm.

Mama was dictator when dad was gone, and she did not spare the rod no matter how hard we worked, and some of her deeds would be unforgiveable to many of you, and some are so horrible that I cannot share them, but even this year I recalled to my husband that she was often having conversations with herself, and it had never occurred to me that my mother may have been hearing voices,  though as she grew older, that particular part of her personality seemed to disappear.  I know that she was so abused by my Dad as were a lot of Appalachian women at the time who married to get away from abuse, that she would often during his visits pick and pick until she knew darned well that he was going to go in to wife beating mode, and we would beg for these things to stop, and they would, but it would be many years, and I think my father’s joining the church was part of it, but my mother had serious health problems which went on for years, because the pathetic excuse of a surgeon who would remove her gallbladder left a sponge in her, and they would pump her full of antibiotics, but finally she was so full of infection that they had to take her to Huntsville where they would find the sponge and all of the neccrotic tissue which it caused.  My folks did not know about medical malpractice and that mother should have been so compensated for pain and suffering as such she and dad would never have had to have worried about their next dime.

Her own youngest brother was the regular M.D. she would go to, and he blamed it on her fat body, and I would learn later how he made such fun of his eldest sister. Mercy is among the virtues which many of you will learn is necessary, for your heart can burst with hate; so most of the 8 kids in our family should be called in or President’s Day, and there should be a grand celebration for all black and white kids who made it through the decade of southern farmers being relocated to the Rust Belt factories, for we are the people you never heard of in your whole life, and much of my book, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” is based around these years when Black and White farmers would get subsidies to not plant their crops, and cotton was our living and a big tobacco bed, so fields would lay fallow, and the crop money did not equal enough to put clothes on our backs. 

It is President”s Day afteralll, so let us celebrate President Eisenhower and his bunch who came in to Washington then, this midwestern man, war hero, and person who certainly did not visit our neck of the woods, for what good was a bunch of hillbillies and mountain goats.  Every body knew that the boys who came home from war would have a little money, but folks like daddy who was not allowed to go had absolutely none, but he kept shame in his heart, and Mama would rub the shame, and we children who longed to have Daddy home were afraid when he came in, for most times, Mama was going to get smacked around, and if he could get in for a long weekend come Presidents Day with as many men as could be packed in a car sharing the cost of gasoline, and at best, getting a cold drink and moon pie at a gas station; then they were coming in.

Daddy and Mama would, “Take a rest,” as they called it, but we got two more brothers and a baby sister out of all of that, and now that I know of marriage and love, I can still see a little smile when Daddy would suggest he and Mama go and take that rest, and my mother looked happy, so I am so greatful that as horrible as it got sometimes, that they had a private affection, their little secrets, and my father did think my mother was his beautiful girl as my sister has letters of love he wrote to Mama.  Those are the things which we all tried to hold on to.

We finally were able to get a car again, for we had to inconvenience neighbors and beg ahead of time for rides to anything important, and that should have not been either, for Mama felt such shame to ask.  I am telling you that our whole house was filled with feeling shame, for people who had and called themselves Christians were not real good about just noticing that a family needs, and this whole bullying business of today was no different back then, and the poorer the kids, the worst the bullying.  I prayed to God that our friend Mary Sue Taylor and her family would just give the whole damned classroom headlice.  I went to school with the girl and her little brothers and sisters for four years or so, and I do not think anyone, including us ever acknowledged that they were alive.

They were the poor dirty, and I did not know where they lived, how they got clothes on their bodies, and they all huddled in the classroom together, these poor kids, but I do not think Mr. Eisenhower had too much concern about them or us even though we always had to wash up at night and unlike Arnold Schwartzenegger, we did get to have a fresh pan of water.  That no one in the county helped those kids  out was one damned shame, and they should have left school everyday with food to take home out of the kindness of heart, but I can share that I do not think much of anyone worried about them, and somewhere they would disappear from our county.  Some said their daddy was in jail, so maybe they got a ride going north, for no one was taking care of them anywat,

When we had cotton picking money, we got to choose some clothes of our own, then when  Mama decided that I was going to be the country traveling maid for ten dollars in a weekend,  I was able to get some clothes, but that was now and again, so Mama must have kept my money now and then, but I don’t mind, and sometimes I would get us a box of cake mix, and finally I had school paper, but with no damned thanks to any President.

If President Obama was going to go down to Lexie Cross Roads, I would take him back on my road all the way back where the old house was, and I would show him that there where two pretty farms sat together, the road is full of all manner of housing around there.  We didn’t generate trash, and when we finally did we kept our roads clean, but now there is trash, very scary dogs, and people do have guns, so a stranger had certainly better plan their visits, but the old folks are gone, and that area in the shawdow of Appalachian mountain’s tip gets called some fairly bad names, and people come over the roads to do business, but the home where Mama and Daddy could finally be proud does not have the nice look which they gave to it, and I hear that somebody got busted back there somewhere for meth cooking, but as I keep telling you; Those things are none of our business, and we keep our noses out of any goings on.  But tomorrow is Presidents Day, and Mr. Obama is going to have a vacation, and the congress is going to be going somewhere, I presume, for some of them can no longer afford to move their families.

Now, I could go shopping tomorrow, for that is what people seem to enjoy doing, and in San Francisco a lot is in bloom,  so I am going to think of Mama and Daddy, and how there are areas where no one comes to visit from Washington,  but the dome of the Capitol needs a streak of lighting like the one that hit St. Peters, for I am so hopeful younger people that you might get together and find some of your votes going to candidates who might now be a Republican or a Democrat.  God help  us from the nasty oil sands in Canada, for there is an opportunity now to start rebuilding interstates from coast to coast, a rapid train system from East to West, and the young folks I see know that we need to keep lawn sizes down by using all kinds of other media which will hold up  weather.  In sunny areas like ours, solar does work, but we have to turn these houses over to the young who can get it done.  We are not ready to give our house away, so we just have a patio of sorts and the folage and flowers are all around that.  I wish that my parents could have lived to come out here together, but that is selfish of me, for they were tired.

This Presidents Day, what I am seeing, and I cannot answer for you, but it appears we have a great big do nothing congress once more, and I am not thrilled with some of President Obama’s agenda.  As much as I feared Richard Nixon, he brought our military home, so I voted for Mr. Obama once more believing that was his intentions.  We cannot win against Arab Extremist, and we cannot reign in Israel’s aggression toward the west bank, but please, Could we please leave Syria and Turkey alone. Bring on Roosevelt fireside chats, and know that we are powerless among the people of the world where Muslim extremist begin as children and are nurtured.  Please bring the children home, Mr. President, and let countries plan their own battles.

It is imperative in two years to elect a new congress, because the congress that have been bought are beholding to their constituents, so whatever party you support; Please let us find our own competent people and build a better world without war.  I believe that if sanctions starve little children in North Korea, that we all should insist that bood be carried over the border.  Presidents Day?  It is an opportunity to rise up ourselves and to make certain that we American people have the power to kick them all out, no matter how much money comes in the money pipeline.  Would it not be glorious and a good time to show the billionaires, the same kind of people that endeavored to starve out all small farmers in Southern Appalachia over a half century ago, but to show them that we can pick out candidates who are moral, who believes that bread, not guns is a way to have affect across the world, just  by starting conversations on a site like Xanga and reading about when the President and Congresss, Even The Supreme Court, can take on cases related to anti-poverty and the role which the government has to spread the table for those who cannot helt thenselves.

President’s day is a great day to look at who all is in congress now, and they do not believe you have the time or the money, plus the organizational skills to kick out half of the congress, for in mid-term elections you, along with the thousands of us are sitting at the back of the bus — We are many faces of faith and skin from alabaster to the darkest brown, and despite their promises; Congress is acting exactly  as it did before the last election, talking compromise, but never really studying the fact that we can gather enough votes to allow this President to make a wave in history within our oceans of discontend..

Have a Happy Valentine’s Day

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Last night an elegant dinner was hosted by Facebook’s esteemed founder, Mark Zuckerberg at their exclusive home in The San Francisco Bay Area for Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey’s re-election campaign, and as we watched the news one esteemeed guest explained that the food was, “Out of this world,” or something to that effect.  If I had large political donor pockets, in this world today, I could have seen giving $3500 dollars to support someone who got his constituents through the horror of the storm where the sea does what a natural body of water does == Reclaims homes which have been built on barrier islands, and I am probably just jealous and have a briar somewhere;  But I see a storm of megalithic proportions hitting places like North Carolina’s outer banks at some point, for 40 years ago; people just had little houses, a few larger vacation homes, and now it is hard to see the Atlantic Ocean if you do not have a condo which backs on to the ocean side, and with all of the little towns from Kitty Hawk to Nags head, almost all the way to the national seashore park area; one can have to find the pull over, and walk to the other side to see what is our beautiful warm Atlantic waters in the summertime.

True, in the old days we could not rent as nice condos as we can now, and they fou ill up in the summertime,  so you may have a nice day by the water, shop your little heart out, and the dining places of all you can eat restaurants have lines out the door; So much for our quaint seashore where I took my little boys hands, and we would run, burry our feet in warm sand — A most lovely thing to do.  My heart goes out to the people of Staten Island, and I cried for the people of New Orleans after Katrina and people are still trying to build back in that part of New Orleans after seven full years.

Here is the rub America for Governor Christie, for local governments everywhere in hurricane country, that if we have a huge earth quake tomorrow and my house moves down the hill; We have not bought earthquake insurance, because it cost an arm and a leg — As I said, we are not the Zuckerbergs, but we have accepted a risk of living in a family home which has been in this family since 1942, and if we are here when the Pacific plate heads North and we do not have heart attacks as people often do when a cataclysmic event, then I would like for our regular home insurance to pay for whatever it might be responsible for.  If we have no food, and we are in monsoonal rains which come here at times; Then we are tax paying Americans, and have always endeavored to do the right thing, and I would certainly appreciate if our tents are soaked and it is cold that we might have a warm place to sleep while we clean up.

No one would turn down warm food or a hot towel to wash ourselves off with.  My earthquake kit is where I think there will be no colapsing, and if gangs from other places come in here looting and beating up people who are fragile and growing older; Then send in the National Guard, please.  But I will suggest that as I hear so many people saying we must have Dikes like in Holland, that we must re-enforce all the levies, and we need to start now rebuilding all that was lost in New Jersey and New York — Then I am going to tell you these are areas of national spending which we need to look at and count the cost.  We know the risk of living where we are, and it is our responsibility to pay for earthquake insurance if we want our money’s worth.  It is also our problem if our house winds up in the middle of the street, for we know the risk.

It would take the stupidest person out here to deny that every exquisite day just like this one where the trees have budded pink, the flowers are coming out everywhere is the ultimate gift. Thanks to warm temperatures and longer days where the sun allows for photosynthesis and the miracle of this early spring, only Stupid would say that on a day like this one, earthquakes are not probable or unexpected.  We are privileged characters, and so is everyone else who lives in a triumph of nature whether it is the warm climate of gulf coast states or the barrier islands of New York where you are at the Atlantic coast, we live in an active climate and earth’s crust and we cannot always tame nature.  Those of you who do not own our risk should not be paying for our views or people’s urge to be by the sea, for nature is always going to win in the end.

I do not want the wage earners of this country paying for a place my father in law bought in 1947 or so.  He was alive in 1906, for he was 49 when my husband was born.  Americans need to sustain the Delta area farmers and see that their water sources are protected.  That food feeds large portions of our nation, so you do protect your bread basket, but my friends New York and New Jersey has to take a closer look at how to house people.

Coming in to Madrid or Barcelona, for miles back in the 1980s, I remember being overwhelmed at how many ugly 1950s looking buildings which were obvious homes to Spanish citizens. It seemed to go on forever as we were driving along that Mediteranean Coast.  Open windowns, clothes strung up on lines, people going about their day, and these were homes, probably average homes of those who could not afford the luxury of city life, but I realized that many New Yorkers only know apartment lives as well, and I have seen way worse dirty and trash laden that people call homes to this day in inner city America.

What is going on with me that I do not feel that you are responsible for maintaining my life style with tax dollars.  Acts of God such as tornadoes pick on everyone.  Paralyzing snow storms and blizzard and ice storms are another example of where I know that these acts of nature and of God like the one which went straight up the east coast.  Such an event can happen anywhere people live, so that is one reason why you buy home insurance, and if you buy in a flood plain, then flood insurance is affordable to most home owners.

Mercy for our fellow citizen on earth is sometimes realizing that we cannot take from our brothers and sisters of the universe that which is seen as a luxury.  Perhaps I am underassessing what we have paid out in taxes to live most of the time in a World’s city, our Paris, our Rome, our Singapore and that I should expect more, but I am looking through older glasses now and knowing that my brother and sister Americans must put food on their tables, and absolutely we help in times of crisis, but I am challenging the notion that we should rebuild in places that are not ours.  We desparately need to concentrate on making Manhatten where the millions live more safe from the waters which brought us to this nation, for sea levels are rising; So the greater the mass and sum of population, the more we need to build and to re-enforce our great walls and barriers.

No one wants to lose what they own.  I am definitely not rich, but I can make choices which others may not can make.  I am not hard of heart, for we need to comfort those who have lost, to provide for basic shelter, a way to work and to school and to attend their wounded souls just as much as we do their bodies.  I simply come from a time and a place where I was taught that there are no free rides, just like the college grants I got back in the mid 60s meant I had to choose a job, and I got the best job in school, to reshelve and make certain all the library stacks were in order shelf after shelf, but the fun times were the evenings when I got to be librarian.  Maybe schools with Hope Grants should learn to give their students paying jobs around campuses now, and No one would get the idea that Hope is a free ride.  My Appalachian lessons of, “Make your own way;” may not be very popular, nor my admission that I do not think you should have to pay for my house on a hill if San Andreas grinds north tomorrow.  I would far rather have your prayers for life, for the injured, and especially for the lost.

I am doubting that anyone gives a damn what I think when they are eefete enough to accept a Mark Zuckerberg dinner invitation.  I would be certain that caviar and truffles were served in one way or the other, and I had truffles in France, and brought a beautiful one home once, and I have a small bottle of truffle oil.  If you never have it in your life, take a tiny nip of  black licorice, and that is what it reminded me of.

Bless those who have lost to weather related incidents, and may they find the heart to understand the ocean will rise again before a sea wall is firmly in place.

Barbara Everett Heintz, Author, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” Amazon and Kindle Ready — The book which takes you ffrom deepest povery in Appalachia, the abuses, the loss of independent southern farms all the way to Washington, D.C. to Civil Rights and becoming a woman in this dynamic tear to laughter novel. Amazon, Kindle Ready, Rentable From Amazon Library

I am beginning to get the picture that violence is so pervasive that we are no longer able to be just human beings.  Let me reassure you that I certainly knew that Christopher Dorner murdered at least four people, and he needed to be caught in the worst way.  Perhaps it had to do a lot with the setting, the snow covered mountains, winter in the Sierras with the appropriate and beautiful snow fall, or perhaps it was because this man wrote a manifesto which was so violence filled that it shook the gates of hell and fire.  But what can we learn from his pile of ashes?

I look at President Obama and realize that sadly four really bad guys have been hunted down, animals they were to most of their own people; And I heard a comment that, certainly water boarding and  torture are ways to get information, though I was no great fan of George Bush while torture was being carried on to equal the pathtic kind of behavior which is expected in regimes of the super horrible people, but again; The commentary was they got information this way to carry out other defensive moves without substantial loss of American lives.  Next comes the court system, and from there in the United States and in most lands espionage is an automatic death sentence.

We must have to assume that Dorner shot himself, the one bullet from inside the cabin.  The animal was fully hemmed in, but the building was burned to the ground anyway, almost as if no one had ever known this man to be a public servant.  The man went fricking crazy after he was fired, and when they look back over everything, he was probably in need of having counseling available to him after that firing.  Letting people go from something which is their avocation, income, and love — especially in a police department or any areas of law enforcement turns out a person who has access to guns and who knows how to use them.  I have never heard what he was fired for.

Kids are riding around out here, especially over in Oakland, and they just shoot; BANG – BANG, and show signs of being fully without conscience about the act of killing, and then, if  they get their games, their gang initiation, and they know police officers kill other police officers, I see that it reenforces to them that such is the way the big men handle things.  Just shoot them.  Movies of violence sale, and no one in Hollywood is going to raise their hands and comment, “We need to cut this vilence out, for it gets in to kids heads,” and you can say they learn a lesson at the movie’s end when the good guys win after all, and I am going to suggest that the bloodier it is, the more apt they are going to want to get one of those guns in their hands.

Could the police officers not have made a paremeter, backed off from a gun battle, laid low until night and brought some people Dorner loved in to make us seem more like human beings, and if he killed himself before the family or friends walked in to endeavor to get him to walk out, then there is so much which could have been determined from what took this man who once protected the public over the edge.  He was not going anywhere from that cabin, and my prayers are with his family, and certainly with the families where he commited cold blooded murder.

America is on a blood high every day.  Lovers quarrels, catching perpetrators trying to get away.  In my mind, I see a river of blood just washing away out to the sea of blood where infanticide is still practiced if a male is not born — The violence and blood of now and of ages past.  Oh my God, I know that you have said through Revelations that wars, rumors of war, that mothers will kill their own children, brothers and sisters will kill each other and we all witness daily that such Revelation is now.  So I am going to ask you God to help us seek an end to all wards to welcome in a millinium of peace, and for those of us who believe in such matters, know these signs, and we still beg human beings to look in their mirror and to see that peace has to begin somewhere, for the more we keep killing off the captured, the less we know, and the more we will live in hate as the river of blood flows in to the primordial valley from whence human nature had made few changes in 3000 years.

Some of us want you to know though that we pray for the sinner as well as the victims;  “Oh Merciful God;” let us pray even louder, and may we as President Obama to end assassiinations.  When the wicked are caught, we can only hope for the miracle of finding enough love, patience, and dignity to someday over turn the death penalty in this country.  I pray for movie and game makers who have hardened our childrens heart to the point seeing a head blow up and brains blow out can be used as humore in theaters.

It has got to end; Lord, Please — May it end, and one way that is going to happen is for administrators need enough skills to note that a police officer should have times and places with all of their colleagues to talk about the horror that we keep building jails, and this deters criminal minds little, but from LA to New York City — Police firings should be handled with a professional psychologist present to evaluate the response.

May a river of peace someday flow from the blood soaked grounds.  The Lay public does not get that dying is one heck of a lot easier than knowing you will never see the light of day again out side of prison wall — Prisons and walls we would all like to see torn down and not built up, for the day is at hand to intervene somehow and someway before a killer starts looking for another kill, let us begin stone by stone to dismantle even a movie industry focused on battles, the horror of violence in children’s games,  and movies needs to be tamed with no apologies for loosing the fun of murdering people or maming them in horror.

Every rock wall begins with stones, and I do wish we could begin to gather the stones toward a world of peace this year;  For next year is always another year too late, wo please enter a place of mercy dear friends, for my age is passing the torch.  Please do a better job than we did to stop the carnage.

Barbara Everett Heintz, Author of Pinkhoneysuckle on Amazon and Xanga – Also Kindle Ready

I am feeling so very anxious tonight, and it is probably because I have the Pulmonology Appointment tomorrow at California Pacific, and even in my work years, I knew the Pulmonologist were the most patient of all of the physicians.  I go in to this very young Dr., and it is peaceful. He does not rush me, and with youth his ability to multitask and do all of the computer work talking with me at the same time and getting his recommendations of care ready seems to happen with all of the time I need — Certainly a Zen personality.  Most of all, I am not afraid there, for he will be looking at me, looking at my latest blood clot in my lungs, and if I colapse in a heap, then I am in the safest of places, or I will never know what hit me.  “Hello God,”  It is me, Barbara again, and this time I have proof of my death.”  Look at that clot on the computer, and I am tired of being sick, really tired.

The worst patients ever are the lung patients, so that is why Pulmonologist deserve Sainthood before they begin.  His primary interest are the young adult MS patients though, which once meant certain death, but they do understand the process of why their organs, especially the lungs want to form mucoid plugs — Think of having your airways stopped up with little wads of mucous every day, every hour, and every bad cold ccan be pneumonia, and you’ve got the beginning and end of the MS patients life, though for some it is more lethal in the pancreatic functions;  However, for all the days man has walked upright; Two MS carriers are, for sure apt to have an MS baby, but there is hope now, precious hope, newer mucolytics, and last I knew there were machines which took the place of laying the MS child over your knees and pounding on their lungs for an hour to clear the lungs for one more day.  It is called postural drainage with palpation.  Hands of the pounder act like suction cups as one beats some rhythmic cadence.

COPD patients who had no discipline to give up cigarettes are very apt to be bargaining constantly even if they desire  a cigarette.  Want to see something which makes you repress vimiting, then see a patient take themsselves off a respirator, stick it in the hole in their neck and suck in smoke, and if you think that ad on television is over exaggerated with the horridly emaciated person, the tracheotomy, and their yellowing skin is then you are tragically mistaken. Cigarettes leave to a stinking death with stinking snot. We can preach this until hell freezes over, but that drag on the cigarette after your addicted  is just so appealing, to younger people for doesn’t everyone in Hollywood have a cigarette after sex, with pretty red lips and a guy who looks like he was chiseled in to proportion?  Sadly, socioeconomically, in our country, the poor smoke more, and when I have watched television late at night if I cannot sleep, I watch channels which the poorer people used to seem to choose to watch in their hospital stays, and I noticed this — Most of those public service announcements which might speak to the young about blowing out their lungs with their ciggies just do not seem to be on for those who may need those television pictures most.

Pulmonologist have to put up with people like me who just know what to fear.  They must take care of children and young adults who have MS or other genetic lung disorders, respiratory cancer patients — the most preventable, for again, smoking is a leading cause of lung as well as mouth, tongue, naso-pharyngeal, and structures of the throat.  Chewing tobacco gets the same rap.  I should not hit on smokers too hard, for the truth is; Smoking is a drug addiction, and it is legal drug addiction, an amazing thing  considering how other persons who become addicted to the non-legal drugs get mired down in the criminal justice system at some point.  There are so many elder people in chronic pain for fear of addiction, because they have been told since day one of their understanding that addiction to medicines is a horrible thing, and unless they get to a Hospice which is really hard, for we have made it all about living well while dying, they will not learn their suffering is in vain.  Pulmonology is a field which, I believe, the more sympathetic physicians decide to embrace.

This is about me, my life, and tomorrow, and the fact that every human being, as we age, we will be dealing with various levels of chronic disorders, and the potential to have spontanious blood clots is one you do not want to have.  You need not fear it greatly for I am the only person I know who has the genetic markers which turned on when I was 63.  Some of you younger folks might think of research into family lines with clotting disorders, for it is probably under diagnosed since one method of diagnostics is the one where the blood clot clogs a major cardiac vessel, and there is a blood clot, so the hospital record might show that, “Patient died from a cardiac embolism.”  But it is too expensive to run tests to pre-examine all people, nor is it realistic to check everyone for a clotting disorder.  Generally people who are afraid to live for fear of dying do less living than the rest of us, and I feel horribly sorry for them in our society especially; For no one can grab them, intervene, give them the psychological help they need, and to even allow them time to come to realize that fear is where their pain is coming from.

If you are old enough, you know people who take in pages of infirmaties and physicians who have condoned these behaviors.  But I remember having anxiety attacks about death when I was a child, and they were horrible — That transferred to an adult’s fears must be even more lethal.  Hear the voices of some of the returned Veterans from the war no one will end in the Middle East, for it is enough to make you weep.  There are so many young and middle aged persons not adjusting well back state side,and I wish I could hug every one of them, the biggest Mama hug I could give.  They are terrifyed, and many were surrounded with the feaar of dying daily, and even if they are Christian; What eyes cannot see and ears cannot hear, their faith is wounded, for they have been saying, “Hear me lord,” through years in some cases, for God and country, for proud parents, and for their own lost friends — They return to the chance of dying.

I keep saying this is about me, and that it is about tomorrow — But what happens when I write things down, then I seize the hour and moment to share some things which I know.  I have to figure out tomorrow with my pulmonologist why I get too fatigued to do the chores which I long to do.  I do not feel like going to the store, walking outside, and the pink blossoms are popping now in San Francisco.  I heard a dove today, and I hear baby birds, so I hear the calling to get outside and to live.  I just get out of breath and exhausted, no exercise, and I am not losing weight I long to.  My pulmonologist will listen, and I am fairly astute about such things, that he is apt to want me to have some cardiac test, so I will be delayed longer in just feeling well enoguh to prepare my things to go back to Ohio for the best of all months.  I do not want to be the nice lady in the pulmonologist office talking about my latest blood clot, but that is the only option right now.

Relinquishing control is another issue, for do we not all like to be in control of our days.  I am the one who makes our vacation plans if my husband is agreeable, though he thinks being here or with the grandchildren at our Ohio place is all of the diversion we need.  I am way more of an adventurer, for I do not find San Francisco to be the center of the earth, and I’ve told you so.  History beckons, and I long to continue to be a student.  I want to go south again to breath my air.  I cannnot tell you how peaceful it is to get off of Highway 24, to head back in the pine forests which shelters the Airforce base there from outsiders, to pass by the little churches on Wednesday nights, and maybe hear the singing if we drive slowly.  The old roads home which we have traveled happily so many times, then maybe on to Atlanta.

My breathing is easy if I just sit, but like my father, I need to check out the birds nest and to see from our scarce trees where the dove was calling from.  That is living and a life, not sitting, counting every symptom, making a dent in this chair.  Do not write me off world, for I really do have places to go, but I am making fewer promises.

Barbara

Barbara Everett Heintz, Author of,”Pinkhoneysuckle,” Amazon, KDP, Create Space

Book Festival Awards 2012 San Francisco @ 1st Place in Hollywood For Potential For Film Adaptation

The last time I was in Rome, more than a decade ago, I am certain that I walked 15 miles or more in one day.  I took in a DaVince exhibit, the courier who had arranged so much of it, was a dear friend’s son in his joyful untamed days of his mother’s amusement. I was certain that it would be of humor to the friend who needed amused at the time, for she was fully determined that her diabetic condition would not  leave her as an amputee, something she feared to the core.  All I was looking for was a clean ladies rest room, and thus I saw the sign among all the Government buildings, Their national museum, so with tired limbs the twelve dollars for a clean restroom and a cool place to rest just seemed to be the perfect bookends..

There is something about Rome which makes sense, for it constantly unearths ruins from ages past, and yet it seems to take no notice that all that we long to see from The Spanish Steps at one extreme to the Vatican at the other – The antiquity of eroding fountains from hundreds of years earlier crumble with their trickle of fresh water for the thirsty.  Buildings have major damage in the eye of one who looks closely, and the nights are ruined with the constant hum of the mopeds.  Most European nations have these, but there seems to be little effort to quiet the noise, to clean the air which eats away at monuments and even at all living things; And yet the center of the known earth feels like Rome, and I thought that, might I have a second chance at life, then let me be a Roman, one with long dark curls and olive skin.  Let me wear the white wedding gown and marry in the church, gather in a Grotto with all friends and neighbors who would dance until morning, until their bodies were warm and perspring the hot sweat of evening gone and morning to come, but that slight scent which draws them to each other.

My love and I would go away, and open the tiny treasures for each other.  I would have order pure rose oil from Paris, touch it to our perfect cotton sheets from Egyptian cloth, but for him, it would be all oils scented with spice from tropical places, but taken pure from seeds and buds, for I love fragrant oil which lingers on the skin and takes away the friction of my skin, his skin.  I would love deeply, and take in the air of my marriage bed empire, for we have so few empires which are our own, so few places to open our whole selves without the intrusion of the other world — That one which is not ours — If I were to be born Roman, that is to say, then I would belong to history in a way where I feel no belonging now.

St Peters is where most of us go every time, for there is something there that is so powerful that once you know Catholicism, you are called back.  There I have cried for lost loved ones, and lit candles for the sick, begged God for the miracle of my brother in law’s recovery so long ago; But he died, and Huntington’s Disease is not cured, but at St. Peters, the prayers from its inception climb the walls, crawl in to the catacombs, over the Vatican treasure, the jewels, the precious stones, the finest cloth of all the earth — All is there within the prayers. I see them now, voices like mine bouncing of walls, projecting like little fireflys, the prayers, the unanswered; The pprayers, the ones which seemed almost miracle.  If I could fill the whole of St. Peters with lights that flicker and speak to each other;  just little specks, then I would have it all filled with the dead and with the living, for there is something powerful there beyond the understanding of humankind.  It is the goodness stuck to every particle within the walls, so many walls where evil wants to burn, to incinerate it all pushing back on the Etruscan trail, back, back, for evil wants people to hide out once more, to wait for the slaughter.

St. Peters has the unseen guards, and if evil began to colapse it all and to shake thunderously then The  Holy Spirit Window with the Eagle on wing shall begin to decend and to fly, the quiet bird which watches, I tell you; it shall fly.  I can see the Eagle,  the flickering of lights, and I want the choirs to hush — just for a moment.  Please all noise and motion, for a moment; could  simply stop, for then we shall hear the rustle of all the prayers upon the wind, and I will feel my mother, my father, my brother, and you shall hear the sounds which you have waited for.

This day has meaning, for a pope has just spoken that he shall leave the office, and he knows that all the treasures, those two he will simply believe, for he is a poor man.  He was born to parents, loved as any child, and fed from the same kettles as the poor many times.  Does Benedict know the hour is near, that something drastic must be done, for old ways have too long been lurking through the flickering particles of human kind, the dead and the living?   Was he asked to move like a mountain, for the battle ahead is too daunting.  Poor man, tired soul, I admire his farewell, and so many others should follow; Follow.  The Holy Spirit needs to fly, dive in the darkness, close the door on the offenders, for children have been hurt, and secrets were kept, and it is then when despair marches in. 

I will walk again one day along the street of angels, and I shall walk until I tire at day’s end, but you shall not see me.  We may  walk together, then we laugh at the worry all left behind, and flicker flicker on before the great doors close on our reward.

Barbara Everett Heintz, Author of Pinkhoneysuckle, the book on Amazon, Kindle, and Create Space

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Hey I just want to agree with Catcaluska, Chris, that Xanga is as slow as a cheese ripening right now.  Alright, I know that is not very original, but if we are going to bother posting — Then we want readers.  We want people to come in, protest, agree, weep, give us new material where we may show our intellectual prowess, or that we are probably the dumb asses you feared meeting all along, but Xanga; I am talking to you Xanga — Thus far your improvements have just made Xanga a new overly complex place where I, personally  not feel happy.

What more could I have done, as I have sat up with you day and night, and you show your thanks by dropping another layer of complex mine fields for us to wander in to.  Did it not mean more, our closeness, our oneness with you, tied like a happy lover to the soft pillow of coming home to Xanga, throwing off the stiff day wear, and jumping in to old, cool, comfortable.

We thought you loved us, but here again, we are wrong; You just wanted more from the outside; Now didn’t you.  We were not enough, soft, ragged, just hiding alone with you wrapped in soft sweaters, stealing the night.  Well here is one great big, “Kiss off,” for I liked the way it was — A few good friends, and yes — They go and come, but we stayed, but it wasn’t enough?.

You could have given us a choice of your old or new self for we non proficient baby boomers who just like things smooth and low  If you are going to do any thing; Why did you not just turn the lights a little lower.  Look at the people bailing from your old rag Facebook.  You did not know it when you had a good thing?  Now did you baby?

Barbara Everett Heintz, “Pinkhoneysuckle,”  Amazon — A Great Book — Awards in San Francisco, A 1st In Hollywood 2012 — You do not have to buy it; No, Amazon will let you rent it or put it on Kindle, or just visit the site.

Loved You All, Pinkhoneysuckle, the Blogger