My 4 year-old is shopping with me.
It is December 23 (or there abouts...)
I am obviously BUYING A CHRISTMAS PRESENT
for a relative.

My daughter is putting things together in
her mind....

Suddenly she is SCREAMING at me "IS SANTA REAL?"

"IS HE REAL?"

"TELL ME THE TRUTH!"
"TELL ME THE TRUTH!"

She is swinging from my arm as I try to
access my wallet and buy the present.

Yelling "TELL ME THE TRUTH!!"

All shoppers stop and watch.

I grab her by the shoulders and loudly reply:

"YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!"

Everyone in the department cracks up.

My daughter, realizing she is center stage,
drops the whole issue.

Christmas memories....

Church memorial service was unsatisfying.

Piper was nice, but he was memorialized by
a minister that he didn't know, and who obviously
didn't know him.

Not very comforting to hear that whosoever
believeth in him shall have everlasting life,
when whosoever didn't believeth in him at all...

Afterwards, an old friend of his had us all come
out to his cottage on the bay, and we had a HUGE
bonfire. Some of his belonging were bundled up in
a shroud and placed on the fire/pyre,
including the clothes he died in and
models of a viking longboat and a Roman trireme that
he had built years ago. His gamer friends filled the
boats up with lead minis.

Then we all wrote notes to him on little bamboo
boats, which we either set out onto the bay or thrown
into the fire. His favorite songs were played throughout.

I cried through the whole thing, but it was a fitting
ceremony for a passionate and uncommon guy.

My mother was upset that everyone felt comforted by
"viking beliefs" but not the christian ones. I had to
tell her that the fire ceremony was about KEITH, but
that the church ceremony had been about Jesus. That no one
"believed" that the notes were going straight to Vahalla
to be read by Keith, but were a personal way to say
GoodBye to Keith. She'll never get it, because she
believes he's "up there" with Dad. I certainly don't argue
with her on that, whatever makes her feel better is OK
with me. (And I don't claim to know whether or not he
is anywhere, anymore.)

Now if I can only get "Stairway to Heaven" out of my
HEAD!!!! It appears that there's a bustle in my hedgerow,
and it won't stop.

Thank you guys for your kind words.

They mean a lot to me.

Patty

Strong, well-funded public schools.

Separation of Church and State.

Affordable Health Care for ALL.

Social safety nets for the poor and the infirm.

Strong Unions.

No unnecessary wars.

Transparency in Government.


Real anarchists, huh!

Those are our "ponies", and NO the current
administration is not interested in championing
them.

These are the things that Obama voters VOTED FOR.

That had to be worth 50 to 100 thousand...

He sounds JUST like my mother's father.

MY dad called him "Little Boots", because he
strutted around and expected everyone to kow-tow
to him, and they (wife and 2 girls) DID.

My mother deliberately married a man that was
his exact opposite.

My father was tall, good-looking, easy-going,
fun-loving, smart and understanding.

He used to tell me that he LOVED it when my
mother subjected herself to visits with
"Little Boots" because when she came home, she
was so OVERJOYED to be back!

My mother still suffers from the way she was
raised by her parents, but she suffers much more
from the lack of love she received from her mother
than the pathological behavior of her father.

At least with her father, he laid down the rules of
behavior and if you followed them, nothing bad happened.
He also paid for her tuition to a private girl's school
for both daughters and then college.

My own father was a bit more impecunious, and we
kids had to finance our own secondary educations,
meaning to say only one of us graduated from college.

I wouldn't trade him for my grandfather, though,
there is not a day that goes by where I don't remember
him making me laugh and bolstering me in any dilemma.

I'm sorry your dad was a jerk.

the "rapture" and having to see that many
live happily without fear or adoration of
a supernatural being is causing mental pain
amongst many.

Believers are not used to hearing opposing philosophies
that allow for states of happiness without the soothing
benefits of magical thinking.


"The basic theory of cognitive dissonance is simple: People prefer a situation in which their cognitions are consistent with each other and their cognitions are consistent with their behaviors. If there are inconsistencies among a person's cognitions, or between cognitions and behaviors, these will cause disquiet in the person, leading him or her to seek some resolution of the discomfort. Research on this basic idea has led to some interesting and counterintuitive results, including those from the When Prophecy Fails study. In that research, the expectation that flying saucers would come to remove all believers at a specific time and place was disproved, but this did not lead to the immediate dissolution of the group. Instead, Festinger et al.'s predictions that the group would seek other explanations that were consistent with the failure to appear, and that they would promote those alternative ideas energetically through proselytizing, were supported. This result made the research an instant classic that aroused great interest and controversy."

—James T. Richardson

I am SOOOOOOO off the mark!

I later discovered that I didn't like to
sacrifice time for money, and that made
the probability of my becoming rich pretty
small.

I also discovered that I didn't want to
lie, cheat or steal to get rich, so those
avenues were closed off.

I also discovered that I didn't want to
"perform" for people, so I wouldn't sing,
dance or sleep my way to riches.

Ahhhhh, so, I "settled" for love and children
and jobs that I can do between living.

I wouldn't change anything, but I'd still
like to be RICH!!!

She comes from a family of 6 children. All raised Catholic,
where only one child still has any ties with the church (and
his family withdrew from church during the Bush years, in protest
of what they perceived as catholic support of his wars).

I never asked her about religion, but she was well aware of
my atheism, and her brother's (my husband) atheism.

I think 2 other of her siblings identify as "agnostic".

Anyway, she was my favorite in-law, never any drama, always
level-headed, beautiful, funny, honest and always willing to help in any
situation.

She was diagnosed with cancer last year and in February
she became unable to digest food. She lingered for a month
and then died, as bravely and with as little drama as when
she was healthy. She sent her closest sister off on an errand
and died while being held by my husband and another brother.

She refused to see any priests or have last rites, she asked
that no funeral be performed, and that she be cremated.

This left the family at a bit of a loss as to what they thought would
be acceptable to the broader catholic community they had once so heavily
participated in. (Parochial schools, K-12 for six kids!)

I watched people walk through the "visitation" at the funeral home and
many were clearly ill at ease with no casket to kneel at, no crosses,
no pictures of Jesus....

Yesterday, we had a lunch for about 150 people, and her brother came
to me beforehand and told me that a poem I had posted on the funeral
home's website really captured the way the brothers and sisters felt
about her, and asked me to read it to everyone.

I wanted to share it with you guys, because although it contains no
god-speech, everyone there related to its message. And because the
poem reminded everyone of how much we had lost, and how random and
unfair this planet can be. It could have been titled "Joanna", because
it captures the loss of her perfectly:

Dirge without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, --- but the best is lost.

The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

I'm a wreck...

This is the paragraph I can't stop thinking about:


"We are afraid of the known and afraid of the unknown. That is our daily life and in that there is no hope, and therefore every form of philosophy, every form of theological concept, is merely an escape from the actual reality of what is. All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore of society."
— Thomas Jefferson



Reasonably, I know that all of our pushing for justice at least
keeps the psychopaths on their toes, but damn, I'm TIRED.

Luckily, my family makes me happy, because I'm kind of burned
out politically.

I was much closer to my even tempered, always SANE father.

My journal here is nothing but little snippets about him.

We ran the family business together for 10 years, until
he had a series of heart attacks and then was diagnosed
with ALS.

I miss him every day, and he's been dead for 13 years.

You may be right about "today's voter" being anti-union.
Just because they "don't understand the need for unions"
doesn't mean we should placate them by running a candidate
who only cares about the investment returns of the leisure class.

It is the Democrats FUNCTION to stand for the working man.

The day the Democrats stop working for the working class is
the day I stop being a Democrat.

Michigan was swept up in a RED TIDE this cycle. It wasn't just
Bernero. If we had run Dillon, or JESUS for that matter, the
results would have been the same.

"Brewer was supposed to make sure there were enough voters to out weigh the poll numbers for victory!!!!!"

Is it Brewer's fault that we lost the House in DC, too?

when I was a kid. I was really impressed with Robert Morse,
and I thought Rudy Vallee was great in his role.

A couple of weeks later, I watched a much older movie, starring
Rudy Vallee. I though he looked and sounded silly. I said as much
to my dad, who was reading the newspaper in the living room while
I watched the movie.

He told me (from behind the paper) that Vallee had been a
top sex-symbol of his day. That the ladies went CRAZY for him.

I couldn't believe it. I said "Why, he's skinny, unattractive
and he CAN'T SING".

My dad tipped his newspaper down and said, "Yep, he's no MICK JAGGER".

I want my immediate family to sit on their asses for a week
while well-meaning family members and friends bring food and
drink to them.

I want everyone to cry very much.

And laugh, too.

No "services" please.

I want to be cremated and my remains put straight into
a plastic bag. I don't care what they do with them as long
as it complies with local ordinances.

I believe this is a good post to save to my journal!

Thanks.

and it seems like your feet are made of lead.

And everyone around you is moving and working
and shopping and you feel like YELLING:

"Don't you know the WORLD has stopped!!".

Remember that, for a while, it did, for
everyone who posted here, that has lived
through the death of a father, and how we
hurt for YOU right now.

Time is the only healer. You will always miss
him, but there WILL come a day when you can
walk by his picture and laugh for the remembrance
and your luck at having had him for a parent.

Look, you've got THREE things to worry about:

The brake;

The gas;

and the steering wheel.

Everything else is not under your control.

My biggest fear was being side-swiped by
drivers next to me. Guess what...there's
NOTHING you can do about that, so you have
to assume they will stay in their own lane!

Good Luck! I know you will do well.