Dear Fellow Xangans,

Every time I think that I have this self publishing thing figured out;  Then I send you out a message;  “Celebrate, Let us all be ready, for Barbara Everett Heintz,Me, Among the poorest girls who lived to tell the story of life in a historical manner, to take you to the real 1960s when the west coast made almost more news than Washington, and it was a young people’s world.  When finally the life of a girl that grew up with about as near a 3rd world existence as one can get to in this country down in Franklin County, Tennessee where we were the forgotten poor, because we never complained, though we lived through every emotion and articles of faith which was known to the rest of the country, only somehow the rest of the country did not come to our back roads;  Yes every time I get ready to tell you this story is available, and that it might shake up your world, A new road block comes within my path.  This week it follows thus; The Create Space store, division of Amazon’s publishing industry has my book; and; Heck, you can buy it there now, but the Amazon store will not have it for another week approximately.  Be prepared for that word often;  Approximately, for I feel as if I am dreaming most of this;  But because I know that my friends, my family, and people of the world are anxious;  Perhaps, You will get the latest scenario.

This weekend, CreateSpace is going to be down for normal maintenance on Saturday;  But otherwise;  The Create Space store will have my book available to you right now.  Amazon, Father of Create Space publishing will not have it available for you for another week.  Lastly, the book will not be Kindle ready for another three weeks to a month, but I am working on it, working with Create Space, child of Amazon,and the ruin of all;  “Geez, Mr. Woolworth;  You’re not kidding sir?”  “Ya mean your really going to publish the book for me,” and I will get a check in the mail?  Yes, my people;  E-book is here to stay, so you can forget those, “Cruises on your, “Prince/Princess Cruse Line”; And be ready to understand that writing the old way and becoming rich has gone by the wayside.  It is no wonder that some families are batting each other qcross the heads with bricks when the last of a series is stuck in some woman’s inherited laptop when books actually had some chance of being reduced to online reading.  One would be lucky to paddle a canoe across, “Bean’s Creek,” back where they used to do Sunday baptizing where I am from.

This is what I have to say about all of this:  “Damned and Tarnation!” or the nastiest words my Aunt Inez ever said, “Well shit fire!”  It is that nasty out there for we who use PDF;  better known as “Publish on Demand,”  and I wanted to make a simple change in the advertisment of my book where low oxygen levels led me to mispell one word; and “Does this ever suck!!!:  As the younger people say;  That was going to cost me fifty bucks, and added all together darned near about four more weeks;  So, my friends; Live with it.  If you are depending on this author, then you are going to get an imperfection now and then;  So  decipher the words;  Get as close as you can to the meaning, for I am holding this publishing up for not one minute.

“Pinkhoneysuckle,” is a book that will leave you asking a question;  “Does this woman ever know when it is time to run,” and the answer is;  “No,”  I had something to write about me, my Appalachian roots, America’s great ability to ignore its own poor while feeding the starving children in places far away, and I question the souls of lying politicians  all the way to hell and back about how they killed agrarian America and are now letting it appear as if we have always been, “A Fast Food Nation,” and you are paying to read about this garbage, when once there were people who used a minimum of pesticides, who shared their food freely, who recycled straight from the cattle barn and lived off the land, and in recent memory.

I would like to chat with Alice Waters and Jamie Oliver how in the heck they are getting paid, and the nation has forgotten that Agrarian America did all they suggest and more.  We had nothing to recycle except for a cola bottle now and then, and even our thrown away food served as slop for the hogs or feed for our dogs who protected us from the snakes which hid under our porches.  I have stood up, and I have told you the truth about what killed the lifestyle of self sustaining Americans in the last century, which took families from breaking beans on the front porch and watching cars go by to sitting on their rear ends watching trash television and eating store bought bread filled with air as a treat for Sunday dinner.  Food nation was the life of the Appalachian poor, and they didn’t get a dime for it, and you want to tell me that these self serving snobs have become wealthy off the lifestyle which I grew up in and had to feel ashamed of..  You, “Bumble Headed, Self Righteous groups of morons!”  How dare you steal the one thing we could look back and to be proud of!

I hope that you will check out my book from E-book to a real book, and I want you to learn that we people you ignored so long as upper class and upper middle class American elite get to learn what they did to one child much less to the thousands of children who would grow up in my lifetime.  I want George Clooney and Brad Pitt to come down home with me and eat with Aunt Mildred and Aunt Dorothy Arbutus, and Aunt Ruth, and see how America left its elderly from my place and in my generation, and if you are looking for roof top gardening;  Then you need to know there’s a place called Appalachia where the land is inexpensive, the people are poor for the most part, and they, or more honorably;  Could I say we are in trouble all along the world’s longest footpath.

God have mercy on the societies  who leave their own people to suffer, and yes, when I was a little girl, I felt so bad for the poor in China and in Africa, and the poverty, the incest within our communities, the broken backs of the cotton growers, we felt so bad that if Mama and Daddy had someone ask for their last dollar, they would give it away to the bible sales people who would come around.  Mama put dimes in envelopes for the March of dimes when that meant a meal of pinto beans to us, so if you want to get down and dirty;  Why is it a shame to bring up the Damnable legacy of poverty and pain which has taken the lives of one generation after the other, and I guess the answer is that we just smelled too bad, looked too ragged, and did not speak the king’s English to your liking.

So I hope Create Space and Amazon get all fixed up, and it is true that I would like to make enough money with my book to do something for the entire Appalachian chain of continued poverty, and I am going to pray for that.  Please though, stop giving who we were away to a bunch of Californians who are making up this Food Nation as if they discovered something.  Please, are we not entitled to the gift of knowing that we lived this life long before most of your diapers were even wet.

Hear these nasty words, Thieves, Poverty, Murder, Hunger, Meth, Crack, Alcohol Addiction;  Add Destitute, Elderly, Broken, Shamed, Without, Dirty, Nasty, Hopeless,  and it is all right here in The United States of America, but you get a lot more press if you show poor little kids overseas and talk about Genocide every where else.  The Genocide of the Agrarian America is told in my story, and it gets really ugly, but will anyone face the reality that the story needed to be told?

Bless The Saints Who Appear In Places Like Frontier Nursing, But why were you not there for Mama and all of our kind except to scold them?

Apparently, Create Space needs maintenance this weekend;  The schedule for release is staggered, and if you would;  I invite you to seek to purchase, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” And I can hope for a miracle through Xanga.

Blessings,
Barbara Everett Heintz – Pinkhoneysuckle

PLEASE ACCEPT MY EXPRESSION OF JOY FOR ME;  BARBARA EVERETT HEINTZ,  AUTHOR OF THE NOVEL,”PINKHONEYSUCKLE”, WITH PROLOGUE BY ROBERT VAN EVERETT PRESENTLY OF WINCHESTER, TENNESSEE, HAVING SPENT MOST OF A LIFETIME IN CHICAGO, ILLINOIS BEFORE MEETING HIS BEAUTIFUL WIFE, GAYLA EVERETT, MY BROTHER AND ONE SISTER CONTRIBUTED TO THE PICTURE SEARCH, AND ALL PUBLISHED ARE FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHS;  SO SOME ARE IN POORER CONDITION THAN WE HAD HOPED TO HAVE ELIGIBLE FOR PRINT, BUT THEY ARE THERE FOLKS, AMONG A STORY THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR SOUL.

I reside in San Francisco, California as well as in Cincinnati, Ohio, and due to a recent life consumming illness;  I have to postpone a formal book launch…  By late afternoon tomorrow;  Pinkhoneysuckle will be on CreateSpace,  Publishing Subsidiary of Amazon and The Create Space Store.  It will also be available through Amazon from which it can be easibly packed and shipped, and the E-Book pricing for Kindle will match books of similar size and quality known to exist through kindle.

The book is Fiction;  It is Biographical, and can be shipped to Independent Book stores across the nation, and we would hope with growth and sales of the book that it might be published in different languages at some point.  As we wait for formal reviews; and they will take a few weeks to come in; then I can reassure you that any lover of American History, particularly of The Southern and Midwestern areas of  America will find this to be among the first and perhaps harshly truthful books of what happened within our great country, especially to the Southern Farmers whose lives were taken from them beginning with The Eisenhower Administration on in to and through the turbulent 1960s.

The book is a romance in that it follows a girl’s life in a 3rd world existence as she saw the evil’s of incest, the abuse of women and children, and the broken father’s who would go North to endeavor to slave through weeks of work just to pay a farm debt from year to year.  It speaks to the ongoing madness and sorrow which happened to many women left behind with children as well as to what happened to the people who took families North only to find homefolks in the same poor and sad shape which they had been at home.  Unfortunately drugs and come to the country and the cities, and cheap wine was the pain killer for many remorseful adults lost in cities where there was no belonging for them.

Instead of a melting pot of the poor where all people could succeed, most areas with large populations had two main ghettos, the poor blacks who had come years earlier, and the poor whites who did not know better than to buy property along rivers near sewage waste plants, and the railyards which filled their community with the little homes other Americans had abandoned, because the were the least desirable areas of any city.  The fact that Dr. Martin Luther King endeavored to make the poor whites a part of the Poor People’s Marches on Washington, D.C.  brought only more hostility to blacks and whites, who as farm neighbors had gotten along, even though they tended to segregate together in agrarian areas as well.  Both cultures faced the new world where young women became more sexually active earlier, and thus more and more children without the expected mother and father as heads of the family became a pathtically social culture which fell into the chaos of easy divorce and the so-called liberation of birth control. 

Illegitimate births did not stop with access to birth control especially within the poor communities;  And young people found themselves taking more and more risk, because parents of the mid-century only talked about child birth and having children in the terms their mothers and fathers had taught them. The  relevance of such teaching is that most younger people found out about such issues after they were in the hormonal throws of youth and sexuality added up to taking a deep breath and closing ones eyes, and engaging in sexual activity at a much earlier age.  Homosexuality was just not in the vocabulary for the most part as a matter of safety, for anyone with the slightest difference in how they presented themselves publicly was fodder for scorn.

A mentally disabled brother was our first lesson in what it was like to be different, and the hedonistic ability to track appearance as so utterly important that beauty contest began a few months after birth in every community showed a gross negligence in the ability for each person to find personal value beyond what they had at a very young age.  Being a child with crossed eyes may as well have been a child with a lizard born in each ear and sticking out.  Beauty;  What was beautiful?  People did not look around where they were but up the road a little further, but for those who had to stay behind;  Lives were shattered at an early age.

Worship and Bible Belt Rules were oftten the outward show of a home life but now how life was lived within.  Churches are as much of a part of life as is a drink of water, but the bad news coming from the good news about Jesus was that if you went to the wrong church;  Then you had another cross to bear, because each church, for the most part was a harsh judge of the others.  Some denominations would kick people out over rumored sin while others would welcome you in as long as you disavowed the previous church to which you belonged.  The one way to Jesus turned in to many on the way to finding a faith life.  Catholicism was often referred to as the faith ruled by the, “Old Man of Sin,” which was more or less the opposite of the convept of the Vicar of Christ and the Vatican as a state.  Only later in the 1960s were we seeing more people who had formal bible education.  In no way is this book written to tear away the fabric of religion which is strong in the Mid South, but it is to say that being a Christian was not an easy decision, but not being a Christian was harder, for you were apt to be ostracized from the community, and women did not pastor the churches at that time within the white community.

Serpent worship is addressed and not meant to make light of the people who still to this day find the message from the Apostle Mark that those who truly believed need not fear the poison of venomous snakes nor would they die from the drinking of poison, and writers before me have addressed this is a far more historical milieu, but I am here to tell you these are not a bunch of trash talking crazy people who participate in this.  It has been passed down from generation to generation, and for the most part it is illegal.  It is a faith which I do not aspire to, but as with many faiths;  This particular chapter of the scriptures is viewed by some as the true way of salvation, and it has many theological, “Why Nots,” but it makes about as much sense as saying your church can only have one name for you to get in to heaven.  That is usually taken from a verse or two of the bible also.  So I am not out to lambast those who believe the word in their own way, but I am out to tell you that you are correct.  Religion is different in the Mid South, and it is not out for the so called academic to denigrate.

A girl is going to grow up in this book, so there is going to be a lot of reference to sexuality, and when I said I was going to tell this story, I did not intend to leave out the parts of it that are near truth of what many girls faced. This is an issue that is part of most men and women’s lives, and it is now disparaging that for children’s safety, it appears we must teach them about appropriate touching beginning their sex lives just after they learn to talk.  An inexperienced young woman with zero information weaves her way through the wrongs, rights, complexities, fear, reward, and devastation of sexual behaviors which she must seal in her heart, because she has no idea how to talk to anyone about what is going on with the man’s dirty hands and her pain and fear.  Learning to love for her is as foreign as a new language, and only when her mother is in her eighties will she begin to tell the daughter what she needed to know all along.  This book is not written to be a filthy sex, sin, and book of rights and wrongs.  It is written with the hope that other girls from similar back grounds will be spared her pain, her confusion, and, what becomes the latter part of the story will be open for your interpretation.  What she says of others in similar situations may or may not be fiction;  But may you learn something pure from it.  No one should have to live the sorrows of ages, but it goes on;  Oh my soul;  It goes on, so I bless you my universal sisters by endeavoring to say that we all can find help somewhere and somehow.  That is the good news of now.

Lastly, I want to mention that you will find yourself bursting out in laughter on many occasions, and I want you to laugh so hard that you cry, and I want to know that when things become to dreadful;  There will be comfort along the way.  We southerners were born to tell stories, and we laugh at our own, and I can earnestly say that I have rarely known what was going to come out of my mouth, so the same has been true with my pen.  I laugh with you, and I cry with you through much of this, but laughter is going to be so important, so let it be like rolling thunder the laughter that you feel, for it is the gift that I give to you. 

How much of this is true?  How much is fiction?  Why am I not dying in the last insane asylum on the face of the earth?  These are all for me to know, but I want to leave something of beauty, something of Grace, God Given Grace, and to hear you say that I made you laugh out loud, for if I can and have done those things;  My sister, My brother;  Then I wrote the best book which I possibly could. 
TODAY RELEASING IN AFTERNOON PER CREATE SPACE STORE AND AMAZON;  KINDLE READY MY  BOOK;  ”PINKHONEYSUCKLE’ —Barbara Everett Heintz

Latest on, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” The Book:  As many of you may guess; you just do not get around to much thinking about finishing your book when you have to concentrate on breathing, but over these weeks;  You have come by the hundreds, and I mean that to support me, to Bless me with your presence, to wait out this illness for me, and I promised you that we were gong to get a book on Appalachian People, The hidden people, Those people with, “Two Teeth,” that show up at Tea Party Rallies, as Michele Bachmann said of some of her suppporters at The Marin County, Calfornia Luncheon and Fundraiser recently, that come out of Appalachia, and making certain with the elegant women of Marin County that such people did not represent her party.

That kind of bigotry is addressed in my book, for it has been going on since America started branching off into different states for different reasons.  Our differences are our strong points, and a lot of people with two teeth have not willed to be in that position, for some of it reflects a country’s inability to care for its people, and some of it is the Independent and Great people who have made the entire Appalachian Trail among the most beloved ground that has helped to feed and cloth America whey they –When WE — had nothing. No one wanted to be a meth addict, and we have just seen a show on Prohibition to see what a failure prohibition of most things in America leads people to prisons, crime, death for crimes against one’s self, and we know that Appalachians need the few factories they had back, some reason to work and slave, and to get rid of the devils who come in and sew the seed of violence instead of the keys to God’s Kingdom within their hearts.

The book is back on track, and I am praying now for an early November release at the latest.  Many of you watched the book developed, and I gave you a story to go with it, one most Appalachian folks are ashamed to write about, because we do not like attention drawn to ourselves.  I have been away for a long time, but I have folks all over those mountains and valleys, and I have the burial grounds of my father, my mother, old friends, and loved ones.  No one wanted to live lawlessly or killing their neighbors, but desparate situations have and do make desparate human beings, so when the farming was taken away;  When lands were flooded for recreation, and when folks were paid to not grow crops; Things got really bad.

Things got worse when people stopped hearing about the marriage bed as a sacred place, and it got worse when fathers and mothers no longer had much influence over to whom their children would marry.  People got the idea of multiple marriages, because they could not get out of one bad situation before they were in to another, and no one was reminding women to take care of husbands and husbands to take care of wives;  And women still have to struggle to hang on, but they do not have all of the home economics that schools once taught, and the boys;  Very few know that there is new hope in farming and the need for the organic produce that we were raised on.

So I wrote this book to endeavor to share some of the things that caused  poor whites and poor blacks along the great mountains of the South that were among the early Colonials — Just what made them become fearful of government, of strangers, and of folks bringing in ideas from other places, because the more people brought in, then the more self sufficiency was lost.  Welfare is not good for people, for something from nothing produces;  Nothing.  But you can soon go to Amazon, get the book or the Kindle of the book, and you are going to be a little shocked about how a nice girl talks sometimes.  Once lost, you have to find your way home.  Once lost you want to break bread again, get all clean down by the water, and hear the voices that sing of home coming;  So thanks to many of you; I lived, and I am opening a can of worms that the big birds flew away and left, for one has to wonder how we got to a third world America.

You may not agree with me, or with my brother, Robert who wrote the prologue;  But something inside you is going to be changed.  I do praise God that this book is near completion, and I hope I get to see many of you as I recover, for we have more mountains to climb together God’s people, and less not be leaving so many without and behind, for we are a better people than that.

I should say that you have actually come by the thousands now, but I do not want to brag, but that you care means the world to me.  Oh Praise God;  You never stopped caring, but you lost your direction so I want people to know they can come home again.

Peace To All,
Pinkhoneysuckle Blogger

Mercy keeps dropping by my door, and this time it is a wonderful pulmonologist out here at The California Pacific Medical Center in downtown San Francisco.  Eric Geiser, M.D. is easily young enough to be my son, but right now;  He is my merciful, kind, and most respected young physician.  He was brought in my case at Davies Hospital here when God decided the blood clot would break in pieces and fill my lungs causing the most incredible pain that I have ever had, and we’ve talked about that pain you nor I are going to ignore;  Haven’t we?  Yes, we have learned together that pain in your shoulders and shoulder blades;  Pain under your sternum, and any pain radiating to your jaw or to your arms, and in my case down my back;  Don’t ignore it.

I was not afraid when it was all happening, but now that it is all over, and I cannot get off the oxygen, and I get some under rib pain, or my back hurts too much;  now I get afraaid.  I am just not done with some things yet, and may be I won’t get back to Ohio for the Holidays, but when I go back, I am going to be so excited that I think that I will feel like a raving maniac!

It is an amazing thing how when our life is on a line, a thin line;  Something kicks in, and the fear disappears somehow, but we do not want to be a burden, so we get 911 to come and get us, so they can get us to the ER, and someone might say;  Well, we could work on her, but she is dead, sir, and my dear husband would just tell them;  Lord, I am sorry to hear that, but I am going to get back to my backgammon game, for it will only take a few seconds.  Alright;  She died at AM, not 12:20 guys, because her husband has things to tend too, and we all understand that life goes on.  Now don’t we.  Hopefully, he has not picked up a bridge game by then or he does not have a rehearsel at The Bohemian Club, because I’m apt to be in the ER way too long, and the insurance will not cover it.

The scarriest part though of a lot of this near fatal blow has not been the event, for it has been the exams afterward;  Put some muscle in that probe, and see if that one heavy Mama has another DVT.  Oh my God;  She is shaking; “Does she have a history of depression?”  Shake;  Shake, Chill, Terror, Can’t Swallow;  Can’t Speak, but they think that I am deaf too.  “Yep, Depression;  Is anyone here with her?”  I think that guy out there said he was her husband?”  By the time Frank gets in there, I am now in a seizure, and they are asking;  “Does she always talk this way?”  In the background, I am crying uncontrollaly, because I am scarred to death that I cannot get anyone to understand that I feel like I am having seizure activity and at the least, probably muscle spasms, because they have kept me uncomfortable for so long,  My voice continues; “Cry, sob, sob, uh;  Oh please, uh, not;” “Not what dear,” “The D wor–dd, ah; Oh; my back; Help; somebody;  He—lp lp lp; and all look on in amazement as my body jerks indicating there is definitely something wrong.”  They cover me, and I am not hot;  “Mm, Mm, Mm ba—ck ck ck;  hurts, hurts, hurts.”  Looking straight at my husband; Again, I am not in the room, or I have become invisible; “What is she saying,” And he has some idea;  that, “I want my doctor;  I hurt, and No she is not usually this bad.”

Then my real internal medicine physician leaves me in town going on vacation with the PA to follow up on my coumadin, and God being my witness;  Ladies and gentleman;  You should not let PAs touch you, and I mean this.  The US government wants to put some of the work load on physician’s assistants, many who do not know shit from shinola, “An old southern expression,” but these folks are dangerous.  They usually have four years of college at best, and they work along side a Dr..  You need far more a good and experience intensive care background nurse, or a good old floor nurse who has worked and has seen it all over about ten years.  Choose your poison, especially now that they are thinking of making it as such nurse techs could give you your shots.  No one respects a nurse tech more than me, but do we not have enough medical techs in this country;  Worse;  We have these physician’s assistants who get so close with the Dr. they practice with that, especially if they are male;  They love it, because you call them Dr. and they might correct you once, but after that they will go on letting you think they are a physician.

In my coherent state, I can tell you that it was not so much the near death experience as it was the lack of care that frightened me.  I am that old nurse you would want, and the visiting nurses who come to my house, especially;  Nelly, from the Ukraine, she advocates for me, and so have some of the other nurses, but Nelly makes you feel safe, for that is the way she is.  Now she has me fixed up with Dr. Geiser who  will know why my lungs are not breathing like they are supposed to, and he will take care of my coumadin which the stupid PA had told me to go to the ER for when it was too high this past week end, and too low the whole previous week.  I told him;  “This is my life,” and I did not add;  You metaphorically Ring Around My Toilet.”  He just acted all miffed, and he was in charge of me and how many more critical care patients this weekend.

I cried for the Grace of receving the call from Dr. Geiser that he would take care of me, because these nurses had come in and let him know what was going on, that people were screwing around with my life, and no one was in charge with my Dr. out of town except a PA and another physician whom I have never met, and in fact;  I thought she was a gynecologiest.

So I leave you with this thought.  Eric Geiser, M.D., pulmonary medicine here in San Francisco will get me well, and the visiting nurses will follow me, and let us pray that he never becomes irresponsible and jaded as a physician, and I am going to leave this to you.  If you are an at home chronic and critical care patient like me who just wants to get well enough to go back to Ohio;  Then what are you going to do with the state of medical care.  PAs are dangerous to be used like doctors, and nurses usually know when to step back, but if an old nurse like me has to go and beg for help;  Then you decided;  Do you want Dr. Eric Geiser if you cannot breath enough oxygen in, or do you want a physician’s assistant.  Do you want a nurse tech giving you a shot in stead of a licensed RN.  My friends;  what do you want?  We are going to get what we demand, and I know where I am better cared for.  God Bless Dr. Geiser, for I am now convinced that he will help me get well.  I hope my physician has a nice vacation;  He works hard, and I trust him, but if you have really sick patients;  You have to leave them in special care, or you are dancing with the devil, and he is dressed very nicely, for he is a devil only to those who know we need him; And that is a lawyer.

“What is she trying to say?”  And the answer was that I felt like I was dying;  I had had a very bad body spasm; and most of all;  I was trying to say;  “I am scarred to death.”

Pinkhoneysuckle

I need to blog to the heavens this evening, for I need to talk to Mama and to Daddy, and yes at 62, and even though they are gone; It is Mama and Daddy to me, for that is the way of Southern families, and I know that the heaven’s were glad this week as the earth and family who knew, Mr. Jeff Luttrell laid him to rest with his Mama his Daddy, and his lost baby girls from so long ago. On the other side though, the old friends and loved ones, including my own were going to be there to greet him, for a better man never lived. I weep with his family, my old friends, and they know as do I; A saint and not a sinner went home.

I just want to let you know, Mr. Jeff, Mama and Daddy, I am so glad that you are together again, so walk to the new water together, and there bathe in the light of Jesus. He gave you the little time with us, and with all of you gone; I would expect our brother James might be called next, for Mr. Jeff watched over James after Daddy and Mama were gone, and we lived far away, and I do not think that Jame’s heart will bear up under losing that last link to Mama, especially. Mr. Jeff was a Holy Man.

I want Mama and Daddy to know too that I have not given up on Pinkhoneysuckle. The publisher which I chose has not lived up to anything which I thought they it would, but I am hanging in there, and the book will come out, and I have told them that I will never use them again, and it would take a miracle to make me eat those words. I have stayed up nights and days, and I have tried so hard to get out our story. I have dealt with the disingenuous publishing company, because they were called, the lesser of evils, for there are a whole lot of bad people out there who are going to take your money, and you are going to wind up with a book that you are ashamed of, and I can see that if I get it to publishing; It is beautiful. Most people could buy a new car for what I have invested in this now, but Mama and Dad never saw me back down, no matter how horrible things got along the way.

It seemed as if my surviving the pulmonary embolus, instead of bringing out the best of these people, almost brought out the opposite. When you start seeing that you are doing their work, that they are stringing you along, and the whole concept of a, “Team,” working for you is a joke, then your heart breaks, for you trusted a few of them until now. The last morning I talked with them, a fresh mouthed young lady who I had no memory of speaking with told me she was my project manager, and if you knew how many people have called themselves, my project manager; then you would laugh out loud. It is all a rouse, and you pay up front which my husband said I would regret, doing, and has he ever been right about that, but he made it worse too my getting involved in the time line and taking most things back to square one when I was ill.

But Mom and Dad, they do not know me; I can outlast any one of them, and if I need to, I will bring in a legal person to look at the document which I signed in the beginning. Honestly, I did not know who I was talking with was a salesman back in May. That is how things are now, that people are so out for the dollar; They will tell you what is not true, place a long contract on line you can hardly think through, and next thing you know, you’ve bought their product. Yet in you Holy names, before this is over; I will have the book, even when I have been so weary that I wanted to pull out, but in the ICU; I kept thinking I had to finish your story, and I have.

I am so sorry that it has taken so long, but I am on another countdown now, and I am going to get your story finished, no matter what they try, and if things get bad enough, I will hire a lawyer, because what the salesman told me was a lie. He told me what they could do for me as I asked the questions, and he made it sound as if they would be doing the work, but not so; I got taken, and you pay thousands of dollars to do the work, and if you can make your soul keep going back for one more round of being knocked down here; Then you will eventually get your book, but this is not just anybody’s book; It is yours, my folks, the old friends and loved ones, and I am telling them our story, and you would be proud, because I have told it well. I have told it like, “The Heart of Darkness,” and floating on down the Amazon river with fear at every turn, and I have mainly told the truth, because I want weak and pathetic figures to know that once upon this earth resided people who gave a damned for each other. Some thought this Create Space was the best thing that ever happened to them, and I have endeavored to Create Space in every way possible, to give people the benefit of a doubt that a good Publish your own book company was out there, because I believed it, no matter that I was going to be wailing like the dead man along the Amazon journey, and I just kept thinking that out of darkness I would see the light. Instead it was just more soul eatting cannibals.

Mama and Daddy, friends and readers; Pinkhoneysuckle, the book is coming, and they can keep making it difficult at every turn, but I am going to push away from the water’s edge, get out there in the middle, and see that it gets out as I promised I would tell the story, the old, old story of the millions that were us, the children of Appalachia, and for you, Mama and Daddy; They can keep knocking me back, and I am going to keep coming back as before. But I want people out there to know and to know well that this is a dangerous buisness. Young people most of you cannot afford it, and though the bookstores are closing down; I am here to tell you that 60 years from now; We will still have book shelves. We will have come home by then, and you will be waiting for us, but out here, part of my surviving has been to get this project done. And for all of these people who made hell for us on earth, took our money under false promises, and absolutely verbally lied about your product to make a sale; My book will be here, but you will be forgotten, and I invite every person to ask me before they sink themselves in to one of these book publishing scams. Is this not just what we need? More scam artist, when the American economy is flat on its face, just more people one cannot trust. I am so sorry that I had not figured them out, Mama and Daddy, but I will leave the door open for some younger people to come to me and ask me what the feeding chain is like along the river, and I can warn them of a few bottom feeders, and I am so ashamed that it has come to those words.

Yes, I made it, and I will use a lot of this time counseling younger people to watch out for the new world of criminals under the guise of publishers and project managers. I will help, and I will do what I can as you taught me to speak for the voiceless. It has got to be a horrific degradation of the society that we must say to our Younger ones; “Watch out from every side,” but they need to know.

Winter is coming on back here, but my lungs are not well enough to get back to Ohio, but do not worry Mom and Dad, for I am working hard to get well, and I will be seeing the kids before Christmas. Evil lives as we have found out these few years, but you are the grace that follows, so pray to God for us that all will be well. You made me hard, because you had to, and these scoundrels are about to find that out, for passing the word through the young goes a long ways now. I love you all, and I will see you one morning on The Jordan River, and there we will share the bread and honey of the DNA Saint John The Baptist left behind for our homecoming.

I keep trying folks, I just keep trying so hard.

Alright, God, let us have a conversation, for I have had enough weirdness to last for many a day, and you said we should treat our bodies as if they were Holy Temple; so, Would you please give me a chance. I am not going to preach to these people out here that I gave up most drinking endeavoring to lose weight, because You know that already, and they do not need that old saw. One day they are telling you a little spirits are good for you, and then the next; You are beginning to think that the voluptuous that was your body has turned to, “Potential muscle,” as I like to call adipose tissue, and the mirror screams; “You’re fat!” I am not going to bore these people with diets either, because the truth is the United States Government had this; “Get fit America, ” thing planned, and that is to lower the cost of health care. Come on people; Did you not recognize that all of this came out with the Obama administration just like it did with JFK, for we overweight people are a drain on healthcare, and we’ve known all along that white bread sucks, but it also taste good. All these veggies are in school to become the next compost in the garbage heap, and fruit as a dessert is almost like endeavoring to tell those of us who love whipped cream and chocolate that these are actually poisonous to us, and if we do not eat the fruit which never comes to the market ripe anyway; Then we should just skip this thing called dessert anyway. How stupid do you think kids are, and how stupid do you think we are.

“Alright, I get it Lord, none of this came from your lips, for a gracious God wants his people to soberly — Eat, Drink, and to Be Happy.” You gave us nuts and grains, the creatures of the land and the air, and great big other animals to have dominion over. We had more eggs than we needed; and the eggs met the butter, danced around the honey and sugar cane, blended in with the flower, and called the chocolate and cream, the nuts and the fruits, to get together in one big creation, and behold; We had cake. You gave it to us, so we figured out how to use it all, stuffed ourselves on all the beautiful gifts of flavors and scent, and the wonderful taste in our mouths which watered just from scent, and we got addicted to food. Yes, we are now officially, according to The United States Government, “Food Addicts.” We need to be feed oats, green leaves, the water based veggies in fact, because that bad old starch is going to blow our asses out like humongous balloons, and then we are going to be floating in the air, and you hardly have air traffic controllers enough as it is!

Next up; This depression thing. I had a cardiac echo exam today, and because I have potential muscle; they have decided to use probes and press them over your bones until you absolutely burst out into tears. This is one’s new punishment for no longer having cute butts, for growing older, and for eatting the gifts of the earth; Technicians are supposed to probe so deeply and hurt you so much that you are supposed to go home and beg that all foods which have brought you to this point be removed to another site, because you never want another medical test that hurts like that again.

This is my proof. I had a DVT last week, and I could hardly control tears as they rammed the probes up and down my legs to make certain that the blood clot which hit my lungs two weeks before had totally disappeared, and I’ve had test like this over and over again, but they do not smash your belly, because you have them when you are expecting a baby, and they can see everything as clear as a bell, but now with these same probes; They shove them in to your leg bones until you finally cry out in pain. Then I go for my echo cardiogram today, and they are again shoving this into the sternum, over my ribs, around my ribs, and I was in pain; just like they are taught, and then they remind you that if you are skinny, then they do not have to push so hard. I have nursed five babies, and this tissue has been precious to them; Mind you it looks better when it is tucked in to a form fitting bra, but if I did not have this flab, called breasts; Then I would not have to hurt so much. I was crying out.

Next thing I knew; “God, you are my witness protection program;” and all of the sudden my back was aching severely; My right leg went into a spasm, and then the rest of my body began to spasm, and I started grieving, and I could not stop. Some brainiac said; “Do you take antidepressants,” and when I answered; “Yes,” then they had the problem down. “She is depressed,” and I am asking them to call my Dr. and I have lost my ability to talk, because I have cerebellar ataxia, but I wanted my Dr., because my Drs. have said; “If you have pain, go to the emergency room right away; Do not take chances.” Friends, at first I could not tell them where I was, then it came to me; “Pictures,” they are taking pictures, so just like Tarzan, I said a word, “Pictures,” and then they wanted to know; “What kind,” and I could not remember heart by now, for I was in a full body tremor, sweating profusely, and still begging to go to the ER. I was finally able to say, “Heart,” so this was getting better and my vitals were alright according to them, but I knew that for me my blood pressure was up, but I had my location and orientation almost pinpointed at this time, but then as they are determining that, “She is depressed,” I am able to say, “California’” and I will be damned I knew that I was in the state, not at the California Pacific, wherever it was, but they then thought this depressed, shaking like a leaf maniac was so depressed that I needed cool cloths and my heead up. Wrong; If a person is in shock, you usually want them in what is known as trendelenberg position; Look it up, but I finally realized the only way I was going to get any help was to get my husband in from the waiting room.

Bless his heart. He came in and they said, “Has she been depressed, and does she take an antidepressant,” and he answered, “Yes,” and then they said as I continued to shake the bed down, sweat profusely, and to have my back ache, but they asked him; “Is it this bad,” and he said, no not like this, and he kept putting cold clothes on me to endeavor to cool me off, and once four people got out of the room; I began to feel as if I could breath. I had told them I was on oxygen at home, but they said they needed a Dr’s order, and if I went to the ER there at this hospital where I was; I would be waiting forever, so to just keep taking deep breaths. Mind you they are working with a woman who almost died three weeks ago from a pulmonary embolism, and they cannot give me oxygen without a physician’s order, and a Dr. came in to the room; My guess, a medical student, and the cooling down was working, and my husband had helped me to get my back in a position where it did not hurt so badly.

At that point, I begin to come around, and they still had no idea that I really did not get it that they were a hospital, and that a woman with such a recent history of pulmonary embolism with all I had should have gone straight to critical care to be watched for a night, but instead I had my husband help get my clothes on and to take me home. I finally thought of the other word which I wanted to tell them which it felt like I was having, and that word was, “Seizure,” but at this point; I just wanted out of there, and if I got the least bit uncomfortable again to go to the ER where I had been three weeks before. So my husband suggested they bring a wheelchair, and they did, and folks; I kid you not; The United States Government was in on this one too, because for the second time in two weeks, I was brought a wheel chair that many women with asses bigger than mine could have not gotten in to when they were skinny, so this is the next ploy; So get ready; Even the wheelchairs are part of this conspiracy to shame the fat in to skinny, and if I was not going to vote for you, President Obama, because you are not getting us out of this God forsaken war, much less just making these banks turn over property for the poor to rent or pay whatever they can per month rather than letting those neighborhoods go to seed; Then let it be known that I am not going to vote for you, because there have always been fat people, and there have always been skinny people. I agree with getting rid of the cola machines, but those kids not getting candy at school are going to get it at home, if they have a home now that they were all Bush and Chaney whacked out of their homes, but this potentially muscular woman is not going to vote for you, because you could not fix the war, so you decided to pick on people who are too heavy!

And show me an American citizen who is not somewhat depressed now, and I will show you citizens who are just oblivious to the fact that this country is a disaster right now, and this fat and food fetish has science behind it, but for now, as big a mess as this country is in; I recommend chocolate moose, chairs that are really comfortable for all of the folks out of work, and next time this happens to me in a hospital, I will guarantee you that I am Little Miss Debbie Cakes Sunshine, so happy that even my buttocks can sing. Depression has very little to do with leg spasms and back pain, and blaming people’s illnesses on depressions is going to lead you straight to a court of law when you blow a big pick up such as a person is having a spasm or a seizure, and you send them home while you beg them to call your doctor, because something new is happening, and you are scared to death.

I have lived to tell the tale, so may it spread like sunshine on a California sun shining day, and the next person who brings me one of those baby assed wheel chairs knowing full well I cannot possibly sit in it; I am going to purposefully take off my sweat pants, and you are going to be pushing me down the hallway to go home in my Miss Elaine underpants.

“Dear Lord, hear your people, for we are just toiling onward.”
Pinkhoneysuckle

Hello Friends Of Pinkhoneysuckle;  In San Francisco this week;  We are running into the near 90 degree days, and for those who know San Fran;  This is not what we expect from Mother Nature, so we are totally unprepared.  It is good though for the nudist who walk around the Castro district, especially those with the polar bear fat which hides the other parts which dangle like Christmas bells.  Honestly, from a nursing background, these people who go around out here, “Naked as a Jay Birrd,” as those of us who were born in the Southern United States call , “In the buff;”  Most of the nuddies are not worth looking at, all pretty much the same;  Overweight, hair that looks as if it needs a serious washing, and bodies dripping with the sweat from sun on their powder puff butts.

When you are young, maybe you can get by with the nudist look, but for the most part;  even a touch of clothing is more sensual even then, and it is going to be sad to see when the melanomas start coming out on the fried old penile and buttock areas, which will happen, and I can guarantee you that it is already out there somewhere, so I am hoping these folks are enjoying our sunny days, because when melanoma hits the outward skin really badly;  It sort of looks like dead cattle horns, and the scent is difficult for even loved ones to act as if it is not there.

Otherwise;  the days are golden here, and we have the tinniest autumn leaves on the few deciduous trees for people to get the vague idea of autumn color.  Between my various physicians appointment to keep my blood at a stage where it will not  clot prematurely and fill my lungs with clots again, then I search for such tiny reminders of back East.  I was getting ready to get back to Ohio to see it before I had  the pulmonary embolism, but now I cannot go for the physicians are saying late October at best.  These are beautiful hours in our country, and soon flachs of birds will be heading south to tell the souls there that a new sprringtime  is arriving, and they will be celebrating the days with Carnivals, Christmas, and sending their fresh fruit north to all of us, so this is a glorious earth.
We live to see natural beauty, and I fear  that tired old butts are rarely the beauty we enjoy, but if this is the worst we have to look at;  Then I am certain we can turn our heads, and around every corner there is some miracle like a red leaf, or a robin searching for another nest;  The red birds of back east and the blue birds of California with the dying summer grasses that are golden all should turn you away, around and around, to the beautiful God’s earth and garden where we find joy in every season.  Those gray old winter naked trees are worth looking at; but think nothing of our naked city areas;  For nature has to do nothing but to change season to season to take us away from the exhibitionist who do not realize that once the days of youth might have brought gasp of;  “How beautiful,”  been then it was even more lovely in the soft sheets and upon the bed chambers where the tired body could fall and be as luxurious as a freshly cut rosebud fresh with the dew of one sweet morning.

Come back to us our mountains of fog, and we will enjoy the cold, get out our sweaters again, and pretend that San Francisco is a natural wonder in itself, and we who get to live here for a time can lose ourselves in whatever and wherever the leaves are falling or the sun is setting.

I will long for Ohio though, for I had planned October there where when all that lives cries out to the grandiosity of a secret place where the north star called welcome to the fearful heart.  I  will go there soon, but first I must get well, so until then I hate to admit that not much turns my head down in the Castro but the old theater sign which has been there for the earliest years of the big screen when other worlds were just a mystery until the lights were flashing for the early show, the popcorn was hot, and the best of everything happened in a moment. 

Rambling thoughts from a Pinkhoneysuckle being restored. 

Are You A Two Tooth Appalachian?  If so,  I beg you to read my entry regarding Michele Bachmann and who the Tea Party does not represent written yesterday and last night;  September the 15th and 16th.  Searching for a torch bearer; I seek your opinions, for I am still without a clue as to whom we should vote for.  My Appalachian family has put up with the likes of Ms.. Bachmann all of our lives;  And has it made it to National news that she said that The Tea Party is not made up of a bunch of two teeth Appalachians;  or does anyone not care about the Appalachians who are poor and stay hidden with the least help possible.  Please take time to read the “Pinkhoneysuckle,” explanation of Ms. Bachmann’s true search for backers, for she certainly placed Appalachians in an ackward spot.  I do not have dentures yet;  Do you?  Please read entry posted yesterday, for it will open the eyes of people who care about such things.  If you do not believe it;  See if you can get it from the film of her visit to the Marin Couty faction of  The Tea Party.  A resource to see what she said of the Tea Party revelers who are the Appalachian people would be to see if you can contact San Francisco news stations for her fund raiser in Marin County on September 15th.

Please read essay below regarding two teeth supporters.   With Thanks, Pinkhoneysuckle
Pinkhoneysuckle

On a very personal note, to the Xangans who sent notes regarding the pulmonary embolism which almost separated me from this life;  I am tired, recovering, not quite at therapeutic levels to travel back to beautiful Ohio as far as anti-coagulation goes, but from my heart;  Thank you to the ones who showed concern however you felt that it would be best sent.  A PE is a very frightening event, and if you can tell the story about it;  You have survived the initial attack.  I learned today that the next way they can tell after they get you anticoagulated is to  keep you on the med for six months, then take you off, and “See if it happens again.”  I am praying for a better med between now and then, and there are a couple almost ready for release, but the one you see on television advertised has made several of my personal physician’s patients ill, so he will not give it to me.  But thank you with all of my heart.  BEH

Keep your out houses closed my friends of Sand Mountain and of Appalachia, for today in among the uppity-est comments of Michele Bachmann who claims to be this down to earth, good of heart;  tell it as it is woman had the gall to tell the Republican Tea Party donors in Marin County, California that the Tea Party is not made up of people with two teeth from Appalachia, and I wonder if that will make national new tomorrow.  I live in a nice district of the country called San Francisco, California, and I have been opening my heart to a candidate, any candidate who did not say the same old things.  I was giving Ms. Bachman a chance to see if she had the interest of people at heart and was willing to get elected on truth, and maybe this will do it for her in some circles, not mine, and a lot of us are running around searching for that someone who will carry the banner — TRUTH!

I would tell Ms. Bachmann that a lot of us have Appalachian roots, and if you offend our brothers and sisters of the mountains and the valleys;  We do not take kindly to it.  A blood clot which exploded within my lungs has had me down, but by the Grace of God, I live to speak for people of, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” which tells you what it was like to be a kid of the Appalachian soil on both sides of our family.  It was and still is for many in the counties where I have called home throughout my school days until I graduated from Huntland High School, Huntland, Tennessee and where all along highway 64 you can see the mountain ranges which one must cross over to get to my birthplace on Sand Mountain in Alabama.  Most people do not even know how Lookout Mountain and Sand Mountain and all those little mountaintops right in there are the southern most tips of the Appalachians, and some are among the poorer areas in our country.

If people have two teeth;  then I would wish they had the opportunity to get over to Marin County and down from the mountains and tell people how it hurts to have no dental care, and we had none.  No one cared, and unless they have gone to school on public health scholarships and go down to our neck of the woods; Most physicians choose other locations. We left the bodies of our mothers, fathers, old friends, and loved ones; The dentists and physicians are in short supply back home, because ; Who wants to take care of what America has labeled it’s white trash?  Doctors Without Borders, to my knowledge, does not get back to places like the old heart of Keith Springs, Crow, and Sand-mountains, because they are afraid they have arrived at the heart of the old movie; Deliverance.  I would really like to round up a week’s worth of dentist who would go back to Franklin County Tennessee, and Jackson County Alabama, and set up shop for a week of free clinics, see what kind of help we can get from the church vans or a neighbor who knows a free clinic that is out there just for them, And then I want you to come back to California and talk about the kind of folks you just met.

I want Proctor and Gamble in Cincinnati to give out tooth brushes to the families who won’t ask for them along with two tubes of your best and biggest containers of crest to those who you meet in the schools and in the tiny little churches on the back roads.  If you get a  thank you and a two teeth person smile, then that should be reward enough, but these are proud people;  They are apt to give you more.  Does the Tea Pary understand that people have tooth aches, and they need help?  People where I am from are taught to put up with the pain, and some resort to alcohol and illegal drugs, because they cannot afford legal pain relief.  Now their problems are worse, for the illegal drugs they can find, and it is cheap at first.

Meth Mouth is a big problem where I’m from, and did you ever meet a child who said one morning;  “My goal in life is to become a toothless wonder hooked on meth amphetamines.  Drugs are far less of a problem if you give children some hope, some job they might can go to, and bring back home economics, and classes like shop back into the high schools.  It starts that early, and if you get them beyond the age of twelve with no dreams to fall back on; like a real job around their  area which is the home they know;  Then you have already lost many, for many of these kids are children of children.

Help folks to learn to love making bed quilts again, home made cakes for the little town shops that have been closed for years, and help the boys make furniture, and the girls to make dresses, for the truth is people will get off the highway for locally made products.  Who does not like to see everything from the old fashioned soap makings, beautiful jars of home canned goods with local labels, or fresh produce when it is in season?  Show people with two teeth how beautiful they are when you fix their faces  to bring back their county pride and the country spirit which has never left.  I had to search tonight to find a flannel gown of some quality which I could order made in the USA, and I finally found one in The Vermont Country Store Catalog.  America needs the skills of the old Appalachian pioneers who could take the least they had and make something.  I am not talking about toilet paper and kleenex box covers either.  Teach knitting, cooking, sewing, and carpentry of all kinds Mr. and Mrs. Government solution solvers, and show people what they can do.

Mrs. Bachmann from Minnesota needs to get off her Minnesota duff and go to Winchester, Pisgah, Rosalee, Collinsville, and all of the little towns, and see just how far people have to drive for jobs.  People may be poor, Madame Senator, but most of them have teeth, and they go to the dentist when they can, but people with two teeth have a spirit and feel pain just like you and your titanium spine.  I guess you have a heart made of lead;  Is that the problem?  Then you know, just like their fathers and mothers before them; The independent spirit cries out that it is hard to take hand outs, so one suffers in silence.  Marriage and early childcare need to have a place in local schools;  Just let a few married couples come in like the times we used to have Chapel, an hour or so a week to discuss the truth of what getting married and having children means, because the young people see so much sexual imagery, and then they do not know what to do with themselves, and early marriage is often seen as the honorable way of beginning sexual relations to this day where I was born, because that is what you hear in church;  The evil of sex, and not how to deal with such situations when there are burning desires.  People with bad teeth might even have had the other teeth knocked out.

Appalachian ladies and gentlemen;  Whatever you do, be on notice the truth of what these presidential candidates are saying.  The states which are included as part of the Appalachian chain are, for the most part–Republican, and why?  Once they believed someone like a Ronald Reagan cared about then some gave a maybe to Mr. Clinton, and from the Bush through the Obama administration;  They like the rest of America have suffered, and I put some of that back in to the simple lack of the fact our entire government needs to be shaken up severely.  I wanted to listen to what The Tea Party had to say, but I heard enough today.

My brother and I have come to the conclusion that there is no one to elect.  I believed that President Obama would get us out of the mideast, and instead we are now all over the place spending our money where we do not want it spent.  Bring the children home;  That is one of our pleas.  Use our soldiers for peace time efforts to rebuild America with the money we could stop losing on wars we cannot win.  My dad used to say;  It does not matter what they say, because they are not going to get anything done anyway, so I’m hearing daddy now.  The vote you cast for  President of The United States if you have a congress which is going to do nothing but partisan politics without some majority, means absolutely nothing. .  I give Mr. Obama that one benefit of a doubt that he can only make a difference if you hand him a Democratic Congress, house and senate.  The Republicans have had issues through the years with helping where help is needed most, and anyone mentioning Social Security as just  one of those Entitlement programs is misinforming the public.  We paid for our social security out of our paychecks, many of us;  And we left 401 Ks to a younger generation, and I admit that in our house we have both, but we saved it!

Next, these debates are nothing but the same old rhetoric.  Maybe I see Mr. Romney as an honorable man, but I have heard nothing but bashing of Obama Care.  Folks, Obama Care hardly scratched the surface before The Republicans and part of the spooked Senate watered it down to where it would benefit so few who needed it, because people, like us thought we would not be able to go to the doctors we chose, and they made it appear that elderly people would be killed.  It was all a big lie to keep the real plan dead for another eight or ten years.  His plan was worth while, but instead we are paying for war, and Lord Bless every man, woman, and child who has served, but you deserve better now too.  I  can say that Mr. Obama has integrity, and we Appalachian of birth appreciate integrity.  We wo prefer  a President who has some religious faith;  We party-less people consider our self to be moral and saw the benefit of Bible Belt values.  We had rather there be no welfare which does not go with some job even if it means picking up trash off the byways.  Give people a job and a way to go.  Prisoners used to work when we were children, so why can that not happen again depending on the level of crimes.  We people who know folks who might have no teeth think prisoners should earn three meals a day when so many American children do not have food to eat, because it is not available, or they have no one capable of providing it.  Prison health care is free, but you complain because we would like to see insurance for the masses of people?

Who is valued less by any of these political parties than young children, school kids who have no guidance, or the people who may have no teeth?  I could even see doing without the Department of Education and just giving money to the schools.  Appalachian values differ from Marin County values, but the trickle down theory espoused by most of the rich never made it to the poor schools across the country.  People from where I came has not seen the trickle down effect of higher education as a Marin county kid would.  Taxes?  Save the government’s envelopes and paper and do not send out tax anything to people making less than minimum wage or who cannot afford insurance.  Nothing else works;  so why if we just asked every American of middle income and above to throw in twenty dollars to aid public education.

Where I am from people have more than two teeth, for the most part, and they are not stupid.  They want religion back in their public schools, but if a local majority want it in public schools;  It should be their right and privilege.  The separation of powers, and the separation of Church and state were written by the founding fathers when no one challenged that right of how a school was run, and most of the earliest schools came out of the churches in the first place. I would hope that the child with no faith background could be gently allowed to spend the time in sheer meditation and have waiver from any religion which would dare question the right to different beliefs or to the non-believers.

So Ms. Bachmann,, a bunch of us out here with values from our places of birth along the beautiful Appalachian trail;  We want to see a new America, but you are not it.  We are listening carefully to the candidates, and right now you all just about sound like the same.  I would really like to give President Obama another try, but that means we must vote as most of Marin county votes and vote a solid democratic ticket.  When we do not know what to do;  We Appalachians, a lot of us, just pray, and I pray with the souls of my forefathers to back us that the poor may have a candidate who finally tells them the truth about Washington.  I do know that we are either going to back the present Democratic President with a Democratic House and Senate, then we might have a prayer of the jobs he foresees.  I have not seen one Republican who does not want to deny things poor people need like health and dental care, and we mountain sorts do not call helping those who suffer as the entitlement program people, but we see them as our friends and neighbors who need help.   I want to see an FDR program to rebuild America, and I beg you all to begin looking at labels like never before, and buy American if you possibly can.  Bring back the country stores and places like Vermont Country store all over America,  and recycle from your closet until it hurts.  My sin lies in my collection of food in cabinets, for we all need to have an emergency supply, but make certain that it is used.  Someone can eat that food, and my son brought that message home to me this past summer.

God bless you the people of my mountains and valleys who have given your son to service in foreign lands, the first to go most of the time.  We can change the face of this nation one step and with our vote, but if you are thought of as that place where people have two teeth;  Then give your vote to someone who deserves it more.  I have talked about in my book, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” exactly what is proving to be true.  Appalachian people are hidden people, and still the butt of the last politically correct jokes. I have come to a day when I am tired of laughing at the people who are the ones with the home lights burning in a place called home, not far from Winchester, close to Lynchburg, and even closer to Huntland on the county’s southern border.

This is not to advertise my book, though I have mentioned it, but it is an all out request that when you  buy something right now;  Think USA, and pay a couple dollars extra, and start tomorrow;  I beg you for the people who made it here.  Blessings, Pinkhoneysuckle