Your Story and Mine

 

• On May 1, 2024, I began writing my story. And you know one of my problems with it? 

My age. 

 Not that I tell my age in the story, but having my father enlist in WWII rather gives me away.

When someone asked my mother-in-law her age, she responded, "I'll forgive you for asking that personal question."

 I have followed in her footsteps. 

I'm not ashamed of my age. I am, in fact, proud of it. I just don't want to be judged by it. When I told my Naturopath how old I am, she gave me a Palliative page to fill out so the hospital would know what to do with me if I came in unconscious.

Crimmeny.

See what I mean?

• Okay, besides having the nerve to allow my age to be known, I decided that after accumulating a life of observations, teachings, and study, those learnings shouldn't be locked up in a trunk and buried 150 feet down. They are to be shared. Something I say will make a difference in a reader's life.

Imagine strips of paper upon which you have written your insights. You throw them into the wind. Other people, like children, arms outstretched, running through their first snow flurry, instead of catching snowflakes on their tongues, catch those paper strips. If they like what's written there, they keep the scrap. If not,they throw it back into the wind to be picked up by someone else.

My strips will contain my life plus plain talk about magical things. (I use the word magic metaphysically.) I know physics is at work. I also understand that something divine is swirling around us. Although I was motivated to write a memoir, I wanted it to be about something other than me. I want to encourage self-growth and writing as a healing device.

 I encourage people to write their own stories because their life is important.

(I'm not talking about the "Ain't it awful story. " Rather, I'm saying, "I stand as One, but I have 10,000 behind me." story. )

• My manuscript, soon to be a book, has not been professionally edited. And on a keyboard, I'm accident-prone with tunnel vision. (Metaphorically).

Yesterday, however, I read that beta readers might give it a shot and tell me if I'm blowing smoke. Volunteers are happily accepted.

• This morning, I was inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) when I read her responses to age questions. She has decided to honor her age. She recently buzzed her hair and doesn't fuss with her face because she's tired of all that. If men can get by with it, she figured, women can. (She's cute all bare faced and hairless.)

• I apologize to all who checked into my Substack site. While I dinked with it, I didn't know if it was going out to subscribers. I'm trying to master this site before those throngs of subscribers come bursting in. I'll embarrass myself to a few, sorry if it's you.I was having trouble with my images.
  

I have gone back to Joyce Davis Substack when I saw many Jo's Substacks there are. But then there are many Joyce Davis, too.

 

https://joycedavis.substack.com

 

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Choose Hope

                                                        The first egg is always a monumental event 

After a winter of rest, sleep, and using her energy to grow new feathers, one of my chickens laid her first spring egg. I could name her Hope, but I have three red hens, and I can't tell them apart, so I don't know who laid the egg. That egg was from yesterday. Today, I got another. Yea!

 

 ----Imagine strips of paper upon which you have written your insights. 

You throw them up into the wind. And other people, like children running through their first flurry of snow, arms outstretched, instead of catching snowflakes on their tongues, catch those paper strips in their tiny little fists. If they like what's written on the strip, they keep it. If not, they throw it back into the wind to be picked up by someone else.

 

On a day long ago, there were murmurings at the kitchen table that were not understandable to little ears, but I knew something was brewing. My father enlisted in the Navy because he knew the draft was coming and wanted to choose his area of service. The Navy was not to be, though, for they found he was color blind. Therefore, he ended up in the Army. I learned of my father's colorblindness from those murmurings and how that surprised him. Maybe that's why he sketched in pencil or charcoal, a.k.a. black and white. I learned that during the war, he drew portraits for the soldiers, and I remember he said, "You can't put too many lines on a face."

 

Once, he wrote, "You thought I would only be gone for a short time, didn't you?" I don't remember knowing he was going to be gone. If there were any goodbyes, I don't know them. If there were any tears, I didn't see any. He was just gone. He must have slipped out when I was sleeping.

He survived the war, but not his marriage or his fatherhood with me.

Which brings me to a question:

If the civilians on the home front could watch their brothers, husbands, and sons go off to a foreign land not knowing if they would ever see them again, if they were willing to offer their pots and pans as metal for the war effort, if they could have necessary items, like shoes and foodstuffs rationed, and purchase war bonds to help fund the war effort and still maintain HOPE for a liberated future, we can do it.  

 

Those folks back home believed that goodness would prevail and that evil would be vanquished.

Do we believe that now?

Without hope, if we feel that the future will not be better than the present and might even be worse, we will die spiritually.

We have it backward. The opposite of happiness is not sadness. It's hopelessness.

Hopelessness is the root of anxiety, mental illness, and depression. So, why not shoot up a school, sleep with your boss's wife, take illicit drugs, or load up on pharmaceuticals by the bucketfuls?

  ----My strips of paper blowing in the wind will contain plain talk about magical things. I am gathering them into a book with the working title of YOUR STORY MATTERS, Living Your Life in the Most Awesome Way Possible.

 I metaphysically use the word magic. I know physics is at work. I also understand that something divine is swirling around that we find impossible to explain. 

 

 "I may not get there with you," said Martin Luther King Jr., "but I have been to the mountain. Mine eyes have seen the glory…I know that we will get to the promised land." He gave that speech on April 3, 1968. On April 4, 1968, he was shot and killed. There was a man with a vision, a man who believed in non-violent resistance, and a man who had hope. He made a difference.

I know we are made of strong stuff. We must find our courage, integrity, and ingenuity and gather harmoniously. Remember, we are the ones to make a brighter day. Once, I watched a T.V. show where the presenter traveled the world looking for the happiest people. He found that the Taiwanese were among the happiest. The reason? They believed in hope.

A change of pace here....................

 

I was poking around in an old website that sat unpublished since 2015.

 

It was my old Blog, Where Tiger’s Belch and Monkey’s Howl.

Now when reading it it seemed happy.

 

Why did I let it go? When I read the  post,“What Makes You Happy?” and came across “Puppy Love,” I was hooked. It has a link to a Budweiser Clydesdale commercial that made me cry/laugh/smile. 

 

I am reopening the Where Tiger’s Belch Blog. I trust that the Universe is guiding me in the right direction.

 

When I read, “Have you noticed that it takes more effort these days to hold up your face?” I had to laugh.

 

Maybe you are much younger than me and haven’t discovered the face issue yet. Perhaps it’s just me. I look at myself in the mirror and don’t look too bad, but when I see a photo of myself, I wonder what happened.

 

Well, I discovered the truth. In the mirror, I inadvertently held up my face, and a photograph caught me slack jawed. 

 

One writer asked, “How does your writing look at its relaxed state? Do you let it drop like our face?”

 

See, someone else knew of this phenomenon. Oh, the pressure to hold up your face and your writing.

 

From Norm Papernick on Tigers:

 

 “Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad.”

 

I was more light-hearted then—I’m returning to that blog.

 

Please give Where Tigers Belch a look- see. I would appreciate your thoughts on it. I will clean up some posts, delete some, and check my grammar and spelling. It could be like a high school play that is not perfect; it is not slick or professional, but it has the heart that professional Hollywood plays do not have.

 

It is fresh.

 

Here it is at https://wheretigersbelchandmonkeyshowl.blogspot.com

 

Soon, it will be www.wheretigersbelchandmonkeyshowl.com. I wanted simply wheretigersbelch.com, but alas, someone else got it. It’s “coming soon.” Please don’t confuse it with mine.

 

A Bright Light

 

Blog Feb 6 2024--Look what I found on my desk this morning. A gift from my daughter. What a woman!

 Stumbled Upon: 

"My kids wanted to know what it was like for me growing up. So, I took their phone, shut off the internet, gave them a popsicle, and told them to go outside until the streetlights come on."

That description pretty much sums it up—if you live in town. Living in the country is another matter, and I experienced both, except I had a horse while on the farm, so I was a happy camper.

 

Studied:

Have you heard of "The Trail of Tears?" I had, but I didn't know what it was about until I was required to take a Rules and Laws Course as part of my continuing education for my Real Estate License.

One hundred thousand, that's 100,000 Native Americans, were forced to hike 4,000 miles—four thousand miles—to change their territory to Oklahoma. (1838-1839)                                                                                                                                       

About 15,000 died during the journey. A survivor said he watched his father die, then his mother, followed by his siblings, one a day.

 

 The survivors received one half of the State of Oklahoma. 

 For the past century, the fact that one-half of Oklahoma is tribal land has been largely ignored.

 "A Supreme Court Justice said that treaties were too expensive to honor."

 Finally, in 2020, Justice Neil Gorsad said, "The price of keeping them (the treaties) has become too great, so now we should just cast a blind eye? We reject that way of thinking."

 

Did I go to school on tribal land?

Neil and I attended Oklahoma State University for two years. They paid for his master's degree and gave him a job. For me, their excellent Liberal Arts Program was life-changing. Yes, at a "cow college." 

Calling state colleges "a cow college" is another use of Marginalization. Usually, that term applies to individuals, so I'm stretching it here. Marginalization is defined as an entity with no identity outside the stereotypes assigned to it.

After two years, Neil got a job in California, and I transferred to the University of California Riverside. However, my heart is still in Oklahoma. 

When I find that graft has been a part of Real Estate dealings, I understand that passing laws is the way to get people to behave themselves. Some say if it isn't on the book in Oregon, it will be soon.  However, I see that real estate is as powerful an influence in the economy as having shelter is to us.

 The Oregon Real Estate Agency is working diligently to enforce the Fair Housing Act, passed in 1968 by President Johnson.

  The act was to solve two objectives:

1.     Outlaw discrimination

2.     Foster Integration

 

President Nixon killed every initiative to facilitate integration. 

 

"In numerous studies 55 years after the passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, numerous studies have concluded that housing in the US is nearly as segregated as it was when Pres. Johnson signed the legislation designed to eliminate it."

 

 Hark! I See a Bright Light:

I found a picture of two men climbing a telephone pole to bring electricity and broadband to a Native American village—their first time ever!

That led me to read President Biden's Infrastructure Deal, and I wondered why it wasn't popping up on my screen while Taylor Swift's picture was.

This package is a big deal. Remember, President Franklin D. Roosevelt brought the country out of the Great Depression with his New Deal. Perhaps when the smoke clears, Biden will be honored for pumping new life into the American people after the long lingering effects of a pandemic.