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

Dear Friends,

In the Catholic community we take a lot of grief for taking the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ as being from the day when he broke the bread, gave it to his Aposles, and He said, paraphrased, that; “When you eat of this bread, and you drink of this cup,” Then I will be there with you; Not an imposter, “I, said he,  Jesus was Baptized by John, his cousin who was to prepare the way, then Jesus would be entering the new  Priesthood, handed down  from Abraham,  who spoke directly from God’s appointed Priest, Malchisidak. Look in up in your concordance, ?but you are going to get the picture best from Isiah and Hebrews.  I would like to know how L. Ron Hubbard discribed his own powers.  How did he become a modern day profit of sorts, and were there those who formed the basis of Scientology with Him?

Among the things which bothers me about the Hubbard and birth of Scientolog, is that all which he seemed to develve in was futuristic and not of this world. But in the work period of his life, it all seemed to be about him — Everything was about putting out the most books which would be sold outside of scripture, if I understand this — The mastery of the highest scout honors ever achieved, the unheard of ability to sail or captain and ship over the seven seas — Any size, any great vessel, and as I heard all of this recently;  I kept wanting to hear the, “What else?”  What, after all of those years, after becoming the renowed author, the teacher, the inventor of Scientology, the E-Machine, bringing smart and wealthy people together, then what on the face of the earth was he doing to change the path of history for the poor and for the downtrodden.  Where are the L. Ron Hubbard Soup Kitchens, His sharing in acedemia, his reaching out to children from The ghetto to 5thh Avenue, NYC, for he was a rich man.  He was a smart man, and it seems in violation of what we expect of people who place themselves as leaders of Human Beings that their first call is not to save humanity. I wonder if Mr. Hubbard ever got out and looked along the Appalachian Trail and said, Those people out there are needing some help.

I grew up near a church called, ” Freewill Baptist,” and these folks are Evangelical, and interpret scripture in a way pleasing to them, intepret the Bible into its most basic of terms.  Please forgive me folks, but ten churches can read ten scriptures twenty ways, and then if they were asked to write a note on what the scripture just said, you are apt to get forty answers, for scripture is complex.  I really understand why the Catholic Church has a Vicar to the Christ and a governing body second to none, for outside of elder men who have made some really bad decisions which have caused much suffering among children at the hands of Priests, there is the Vatican Library where scholars spend days and lives to interpret ancient scrolls to make sense of a phrase which is simplistic to some, and the interpretation takes in to account the original language, how the language was used over time, and then to have finally got it out in to a Bible Text.  Does the Bible text hold any basis for the creation of the L. Ron Hubbard books.  Did Mr. Hubbard have a guide, celestial, or a mentor on this earth to him he turned; or is he Alpha and Omega.

Yes we know there is some star power — Tom Cruise, Ally Sheehy, and there is what was presented to me from a PhD in rhetoric, lesbian herself, married to a lesbian, and they share two children, but she shared with her mother that Scientology is a code word used by a lot of homosexuals who do not want to be outed.  Now that did not make much since to me until I realize there have been stories circulating for years that both of our main Scientology stars have been written in rag magazines when people used to rid as probably being homosexual — Not my words// All gossip, but was Mr. Hubbard ever married, or did he have a family.  Was he just so interested in other things that he was saved from being a total psychopath because he found more interest in sailing the seven seas.  If he had lovers, then this was silenced long ago.  Do his followers care? In a transference, counter transference situation, you are apt to have a relationship with someone you are attracted to which is one reason that I have a strong belief in Behavioral Psychology, and shall believe someday that Freud’s teachings will wind up in the annals of science as one thing — That which began all of the modern psychology and helped the medical community to fianlly see measuring body chemistries as a means of helping to develop drugs which has helped countless souls to live as normal people in society.  I have known depression; Oh Lord, I have known depression, and finally a medication helped.  Read, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” and you might see how one woman’s depression came from a history of depression which went well back in to her parentage.  Is it my understanding that mental illness is seen in quite a different light under those who follow Scientology.

Alright, I am throwing my cards on the table, and I know that I am not apt to be a candidate for L. Ron Hubbard’s teachings.  I thought the adds showing up on The Super Bowl were about as weird as it gets, and I wondered if this had anything to do with a membership drive, or is the Mayan calendar a lift off, and we all need to be laying in store what is going to feed us after the Scientology ships begin to fly over the seven waters?  I have expressed the deepest thoughts that homes should have a full three day supply of water, food, and medications to get through any grave emergencies, and last night on television, a Mormon Man was interviewed showing his families abode in a mountain outside of Salt Lake where he has in store two years of all they will need to survive a two year Holocaust, and this Mourmon man was no nut;  He believes we have looked over that mountain taken all that is offered, spit it up, chewed it out, and now we are a world in grave trouble.  Why would you want to live in a world like this after you all came out, and he said, “We would want to be part of rebuilding it,” and to me, I thought that he was a great man, one great man.  Right now I am not seeing that unselfishness coming out of Scientology, but  I am ready to hear you.  I wish that I were young and well, for if we are unable to build up, then we are taking and breaking down.  Is L. Ron Hubbard’s legacy one of full quackery, and who are the Scientologist you have known.  Yes, we have been invited many times in our early marriage to join, for a group was down the street, and we knew some of the people.  What kind of conscience took you to Scientology when arms are out from every charitable organization and non profit imaginable is saying, “We need you.”  Was your heart filled with more of a need to be just held and loved and to be diagnosed with something which began with outhe examine which included energy that you needed so dearly. Whether it be Scientology or any  other thing which gave you back a life which you were loosing touch with at the time, then I am glad you found help, and I am so serious about this.  Hurt should be a genisus for action, and you began somewhere. Bless you.

My Book, Appalachian Coming of Age During Civil Rights Movement — Diasphora and End to Southern Appalachian Small Farms, and Later Demise of Small Towns. Coming of Age In The Worst of America’s Dirty Tricks.  How would L. Ron Hubbard felt about all of us; The book does not ask this, but I will bet he never gave people like us a second thought.

IF YOU CARE TO FOLLOW MORE ON THIS SUBJECT, PLEASE GO ON TO SECTION TWO OF THE MYSTIQUE OF L. RON HUBBARD, AND WHY SHOULD WE CARE IN THE FIRST PLACE

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I HAVE DONE A TWO NIGHT LOOK AT L. RON HUBBARD, AND TO THOSE WHO LOVE HIM; I AM SORRY FOR I AM EXPRESSING MORE QUESTIONS THAN I AM LOVE, AND WE NEED A SCIENTOLOGIST TO ANSWER SOME OF THESE QUESTIONS, FOR I REPEAT A LOT WITH APOLOGIES TO READERS.  MY SUGGESTION TO YOU IS TO READ THE SHORT VERSION ABOVE, BUT IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN RELIGION AND PROPHECY, THEN YOU MAY WANT TO GO ON IN TO THE SECOND SECTION WHICH WAS WRITTEN THE FIRST NIGHT OF MY TWO NIGHT LOOK AT; SCIENTOLOGY AND ITS CREATOR.  I WILL NOT CALL THIS A RELIGION; I BELIEVE IT IS FULLY OUTLAWED IN DENMARK AS A CULT, SO PARDON THE DIATRIDE EDITING IT DOWN JUST BROUGHT ON MORE THOUGHTS. THIS SECOND SECTION TAKES ON PARTS OF OTHER WORLD RELIGION WHICH PEOPLE ARE WELCOME TO CORRECT, AND IF YOU ARE ATHEIST OR AGNOSTIC, THEN THIS IS NOT THE ARTICLE FOR YOU.  Barbara Everett Heintz, Author of “Pinkhoneysuckle”, The Book on Amazon, Kindle Ready, Create Space

Prophets, I have read about every New World religion, and those like the Mennonites and Amish who were tormented to death to live out their deepest and absolute sacrifice of early life in the church and how they got to America.  Some of these organic farmers might could help these folks build church, because nothing goes to waste.  I do not like the Eastern European influence which seemed to brink a lot of venegar for preservation, But these folks give it all, and if anyone is going to live life everlasting — I am going to beg God not to leave these good people out.  I so think it is high time that Revelations lets them know that, for the most part — The men have ugly beards, and most look more intellectual before they begin to shave.  I have never told men of these faiths, but for some reason; most seem to have scruffy beards, a trait of many men of Northern European Heritage.  They only have to grow it after marriage, as I understand it, but in their day and age of coming to America, Men knew the benefit of a good shave, so for the women, I feel sad that Revelation has not eased up on that rule..

But I am going over what I think to draw us in to discussing L. Ron Hubbard, and this add they have come out with during the super bowl to tell you — This was no ordinary man, and it has fascinated me; Why” and “Why Now,” is money being used by Scientology to obviously say; “Look who led us!”  “Look at who wrote and sold more books than mortals on this earth?” “He was a small man, but one who had license to sail any vessel on the great seas, and yet he was an humble boy scouting winning the highest honors in scouting,”  “He began a religious order which begins with and E — electrode machine which sort of looks in pictures like old converted early equipment used to trace EKGs.                                                                                     

Nest up regarding L. Ron Hubbard, I can remember in the 70s when this was almost an elite group to be invited in, for we lived in a neighborhood of professors, physcicians, and many friends we would come to know as my health care partners in school and nursing, and my husband Cincinnati Symphony members, and among the most fragile became a Scientologist, probably his greatest source of friendship.

Iast am also told that at the end and highest phases — Admittedly given as truth by people who chose to write about the highest levels, that what you are allowed to see is a little manilla folder or two of nothing.  Is that true.  Look the ten commandments were in stone, and The Arc of The Covenant — Sacred, most sacred among we Christian and Jewish folk.  We need those, the Arc of The Covenant, and Papyrus where Jesus and Mary have written; But they left us in an awful mess.  We have Holy Documents and art.  Anyone who thinks The Dead Sea Scrolls mean little;  Little maybe outside of scholars, but great big in Judeo Christian Circles where we can see duplicated items from other scrolls which show; Something huge happened.   

Lastly, again, and on our knees we apologize and pray for the victims of our Catholic faith who sheltered child pornographers.  I am not going to accept that their priesthood cannot be revoked; And the greatest gift that Pope Benedict could leave to the church would be to close the divide with Lutherans, Episcopalians, but the one which would change the face of Catholicism for the next Millenium.  I pray so for this Father Benedict.  Faith is hard.

Other prophets; I am not equipped to judge the Quran, The Book of Mormon, though it bothers we non converts that a conjurer and one who develed in Divining as did whis father well known in those who knew how to deal with metals took his Apostles on the his in New York state to begin his religion, and the golden plates just had to be hid back in the place of hiding; It would have been easier to swallow without his reputation, but he died at the hand of an Assassin — Thus a saint?  If Revelations could bring the hierarchy of the Mormon church to ban pleural marriages, then certainly it is time to give us a look, a chance to be enlightened. I love Temple Square, and to settle for The Great Salt Lake was a little short sighted by Brigham Young.  It is hot; then it is cold, and it is beautiful.  Were there evens in the life of L. Ron Hubbard which he shared with followers which will tell of his return.  Is it true, according to your belief, that spaceships are coming to save the Scientologist at Armageddon?

That Scientology calls us to consider L. Ron Hubbard, the most expensive times to air such teachings and for people to say; I need to know more, to read more, and Scientologist; Why Now?  These commerciaals are no accident, and are they to promote us running out her and grabbing a Hubbard book, for sales are down, or is this a good faith effort to say, Ladies and gentlement, you have scene through PBS that Space Craft, and Winged carriers of one kind or the other are in cave drawings.  I am a person who stated from the beginning that I believe in a personal Savior, and that Jesus was an example of transendental travel to show his brothers and sisters that he had risen;  We have to believe in miracles, or we are not people of faith.  Jusus, apparently was willing to show more than some prophets, and the word and the world began to change in a way that would go beyond the known earth, so we have to suck it in and say a madman  feeding on locust and honey, wild of hair, announcing a Baptism which could not even compare to The Baptism to come when Jesus would be sent to The Wilderness to Do Battle With the Devil!  And we thing we have work to do by spitting out a few prayers.  This is for the Freudians; and physicians; Who is going to walk out in The Russian River when some skank wearing animal skins telling you; “If you want eternal life, then get your bare feet and long night downs down to this water, and I am just doing this until the big boy comes to Baptize you with the Spirit.  Scientologist, we keep reading a lot about you.  The add was no accident.  I will not shame you, because I do not know you, But we Xangans are a fairly smart bunch; So clue us in to L. Ron Hubbard.  I can just tell you that had he written in the time of Amazon  and Create Space, he may

be out on our road to Eramaus, eatting on the road side, sipping our water and wine and whining, because we book writers now have one chance in a million or two that our books will see the light of day.  Thank you God, for I have won a contest or two; and if Mr. Hubbard had anything to do with my own success, then I want you to send him thanks, one way or the other.  I close with deep apologies to Scientologist if you are feeling picked on, but you would have to know me, that I love to read about other’s plan of faith to save them when end times are here.  I hope that you have found a word which means so much that your life is enriched at the highest levels.  But take this pathetic unedited writing, and answer the high points..  Some of us try so hard to do well, to do that which is write and good, and I did want to thank you for what you gave to Katrina victims, for that shows there is some love in action.  We, some of us are ready to hear what you accept as truth, but secrets rarely bring us to light as does the Truth.

Barbara Everett Heintz, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” Amazon, Kindle Ready, Create Space — I wonder what Mr. Hubbard would have thought of we Appalachians; Some handle serpents and dringk poison, and that scares the hell out of me.

Respectfully,

Barb Heintz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barbara Everett Heintz, RN,BSN – Retired

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God Bless, and Love, Barb Hz