Writing Reality

Hatred Won't Save Your Soul  I began to realize today why I was upset with the adults with the ability to vote in the United States.  Here I was a US Marine and willing to risk it all for these people and their offspring. I sat back and knew and know how I feel. Where my soul remains. Few people have this in them... or at least they discard the depth of what I hold in high standard.  In speaking with a priest ten years ago. We were discussing 'callings'. He understood what my calling was/is and that I acted on it. It still remains. I'm upset because each one of us, has the opportunity to research, to read, to view, to turn the channel, to buy newspapers with varying opinions and facts, because we're Americans.  Yet, we don't use the very thing most of us are born with. Our gray matter to reason with. We remain stiff-necked, fearing any sort of thinking that's different from our past, our roots or the tribe we think we come from.  People are lazy. They ...

Who's Your Bank Teller? So after I finished my work day today I head off to the bank before heading home for family dinner. Too, more training and Norm Reicher’s selection of “Back to the Future” for family movie night. I never told him I didn’t like it...but it was a movie for him and the children... so it worked for me.  As I pull into the strip center area where the bank is, my brain reminisces about a time in June 2012 in Phil Dunlap’s basement on a Thursday morning, where Killer Ken was late and no one else showed. I had Phil all to myself.  As this thought flies through my head and I pull into the Bank drive-thru, there is the young man I’ve seen clean cut, gentle-manly type, with a tie on. His name is Eric. And for the last five to six months he's been my teller most times. I parked at the drive-thru to make a transaction. I smiled. No one else was around, and it’s 6:46pm Friday night.   I began, “Eric, I just had a thought float through my head.” ...

There are times I want to just blurt out, "You have no idea what rape is! You haven't experienced it!"  Belittling someone who's been through it, is truly something you should go to hell for. Yes. There are those who want to put rape in one little tiny box. And any one thing that does not sound like rape; to those the unraped will deny that the rape victim be heard. And they will deny that the raped victim was actually raped because it didn't replicate intercourse. Yes, I've heard it all. And too, it's been thrown directly at me by acquaintances and family members. All this and then some. Some suggested that it would never happen to them, because they'd figure a better way to escape before the rape actually happened. Or as one female runner said to me, "You wouldn't have gotten injured if you just him have sex with you." Too, the prosecutor upon reading my statement then meeting me.  Told me, that my statement gave him an orgasm. I was du...

Can We Conquer the Last Mile...? With all the new flus, viruses, fungus' and such, I will say, I think we can conquer AIDS/HIV. We seem to forget or want to forget that AIDS/HIV is still ongoing.  I remember when people were dying from an unknown virus. The stigma still hangs in the balance. I've known, and eventually treated children and adults with AIDS or who were HIV positive.  I actually have been trained in AIDS/HIV more than oncology. I understood the pitfalls of cancer research and fundraising. It was disheartening. But AIDS/HIV research and fund raising had a clearer more progressive approach.  I also knew that I was unafraid of the virus. I knew to touch the infected. It was and is imperative for their survival, as well those around them and society.  In the 1990s as I walked down a city hospital hallway where pediatric AIDS outpatients existed. I was scolded for not wearing gloves by a nurse I'd never met before nor after. She witnessed me sitting with...

The Night That the Lights Went Out in Cleveland… Some may remember the night that the lights went out in Cleveland—that and the entire Northeastern United States and Southeastern Canada too. If not, I’ll remind you. It was late afternoon on Thursday, August 14 th , 2003. Well, for us in China it was August 15 th , 2003, a Friday morning—thirteen hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. It was before breakfast and our flight to the island where the U.S. Consulate was. The whole trip was a bit of a bumpy ride from beginning to end. Scrutinized here and there with a smattering of kindness and curiosity from others. It began with rifles held as we landed in communist China—proper. Coming down off the metal steps of the prop plane. I whispered, “Don’t pull out your cameras.” Disregarding my whisper—Don pulled out his camera— he was reprimanded in Chinese. I was surprised they didn’t confiscate his camera as I heard rifles shift. My mind set off alarm bells. Yet I remained mildly relaxed ...

Old Ignorance Dies Hard... I wondered if the Russian people were awake. It’s not that I thought they were ignorant—it’s that I could not wrap my mind around people not rebelling against the indiscriminate acts and long-overdue overhaul that they needed in their governance. I figured—maybe they had it better than I’d thought. I write corrected, however. But now having seen authoritarianism in full-blown capacity—and in real time. Authoritarianism is the stifling of free-will in action and thought. Ergo, Russia’s Putin. Ergo, those that preach within these United States that we need to think and be only one way as individuals. The only reason why any government would like to control thoughts among its citizens—it’s about distrust. Any religion, like any governance that demands control of minds is an insecure one. That thinking is godless indeed. In speaking with a friend last night, I remarked. “Take no offense on what I’m about to say—but this whole DeSantis governance is against ...

  It’s Only the Store… A little over a couple years ago, as I witnessed an illness overtaking my husband. I’d wondered what his thoughts were in those quiet moments when I wasn’t in the same room as he. Recently, I considered it was too overwhelming to put into a paragraph, or pages. It was constant lengthy thoughts. Self-talk. Perhaps prayer of some sort. Or meditation, allowing thoughts to flow in, out and about. Thoughts that many of us most likely don’t regularly address daily, much less monthly. Perhaps not even annually. Thoughts I have had most of my adult life. Some I’ve had all the life of mine I could remember—and daily.   My mother wondered who I was—she’d asked what was on my mind. So many times, she got it wrong. Even seeing my diary at ages eleven and twelve, she was perplexed. However, it was not her fault. With my husband, I went in the opposite direction. I didn’t ask. I just observed. For one it was personal. Two, dying is too intense to express all t...