The Days of Noah (Part 2)

Bing Images (2014)

By speaking of this I opened up a whole can of worms about how our world works. Yet, it isn’t working. 

The world is actually in great confusion.  I often find myself telling my family not to be so hard on our President and our governmental leaders because these are turbulent times.  One man cannot be expected to do it all and we cannot hate him for being human.  After having studied our past presidents I have found that the times make the man.  Our history in the USA is filled with presidents that no one remembers.  Why? Because, those presidents calmly held that office during times of peace and prosperity.  

This President is trying to navigate stormy waters. We have wars and rumors of wars, diseases that have no cures brewing amongst the nations; there is unrest in the Middle East and violence, as they themselves cannot control their own governments.   The ability to annihilate all of humanity is being developed by a hostel and radical nation.  To continue, our country has become a nation full of people that seem to live without any personal conscience.  Father’s rape their own children; abortion defines part of the American mortality rate. A great population is jobless; our entertainment system churns out films about murder and violence as if there is nothing else in life. 

     Sex is everywhere; movies are made staring people who are willing to copulate on film and are available with just a click away.  Casual sex with strangers is being represented to our youth as healthy behavior as long as you wear a condom.

      The morals of others are being jammed down our throats as if it is we that are in the wrong and most practice avoidance so that the complicated round robin of morality is not entered into.  Those of us that feel this kind of behavior is wrong are left to making adjustments to our lifestyles so as not to expose our children’s impressionable minds to those who cannot make those judgments in their own selfish pursuits. Yesterday, I heard someone challenge a legal ruling concerning violent acts on women and children as unconstitutional an infringement of the freedom of speech act.   In my meager opinion when was it lawful to allow morons to speak?  Why is it that we have so many stupid’s speaking on subjects that are furthering the mindless acts of those that are destroying our world? 

Then we cry to our president and hate him for not being able to put the cat back in the bag. 

 To not be able to become a higher power and clean the earth of its pestilence just as God did in the times of Noah. 

     My brother a patriot, asked me not to further the defense of Barack Obama, in fact I think he was asking me not to any longer say anything. 

 I understand how many people do not understand politics.  What they see is the dramatic changes in their lifestyles and decides it is the responsibility of our leaders to define that.  Yet I suggest it is not their responsibility at all.

This is a government formed by people for people.  The majority has the say.  If we say violence against women and children is wrong then that should be so.  We the people should not have to look aside and say in the honor of freedom of speech we should allow that to happen. 

That we should not condemn others for saying any written materials or degradation of women and violence against children depicted in a fictional setting is harmless and should be allowed. 

That’s allowing for the ignorant to determine our lifestyle.  It is ignorant not to understand what hurts people.  We are all old enough in the spectrum of things to understand that pornography hurts people.  We allow it because we have this misinterpreted law in our constitution that allows pornography to exist. 

I say ignorant because even when someone is educated to the facts and they choose to move forward in that, despite the greater good for themselves and the people they share this planet with. 

They do not understand how it harms people therefore they are ignorant to the repercussions of the damage it causes. 

Pornography is only one of the many ills in our society. 

Do we call the office of the president everyday to complain of the mass drug abuse within our society?  What of the numbers we all see of those dying from the effects of smoking?  Alcohol consumption, and what of the random murders? 

Recently my neighbor again (2nd time), unleashed her anger and insanity upon my 76-year-old mother.  Called her a liar and accused her of listening below her window while she and her boyfriend had sex.  A good laugh for me and others who share a common paradigm other than 1 Arm Dave and the Toothless Purple Gang who live down the lane.   toothless pirate  Upsetting for someone who has chosen to live in a place of peace, who has worked to earn her right to a peaceful lifestyle? I called the police.  They were very concerned and I was pleasantly reassured that there was still others out there that share my paradigm.  They asked me, “is she a drunk?” I responded with surprise, that I did not know, "Although it is a common lifestyle for many we live near."  I can understand that line of questioning. However, I have a choice in this country not to pay any attention to others around me and we have not!Choosing to live more along the lines of our home is our sanctuary.  

The neighbor’s behavior cemented in my mind that the weak amongst us are falling prey to the abnormal we have here before shunned.  

I had to think about that, as I had before been made aware of another fact that contributes to our failing national paradigm.  Where do people go that cannot maintain a normal acceptable behavior within our society?  They closed up the mental institutions years ago and families with mentally ill loved ones have little options when that person acts out and becomes a danger to themselves and others.  The prisons seem to be the only option as the cells fill with the fragile mentally ill as well as the hardened criminals.   Who does my neighbor need to upset and/or hurt before she gets help?  One day her daughter called out to me and boasted her ADHD and the possibility of being Bipolar as if it was an honor to be dysfunctional.  

I do my best to practice avoidance, however, what of my rights and the rights of my family to live in peace? Or should I expect this kind of behavior to become the norm?  
Is my paradigm the correct one? It seems to be, and the police agreed with me.  Although by suggesting she was a substance abuser, they could put her in a category they could understand and address.   

      Our President, hopefully not a drunk, sits in a place of power. Able to pronounce judgments and make laws concerning a normal paradigm he thinks we all live within.  He makes the rules and works to provide laws that involve a broad spectrum of moral and immoral behaviors.  We trust him to make these decisions which should ensure that  the majority of the American people not become useless alcoholics and drug abusers allowing our country to become ineffective. We in turn judge his efforts, his ability to understand what we want as a unified peoples, 

He also decides if we become involved in foreign wars, and how much we will spend on that.  A lot apparently! And then like every President he makes mistakes: recently, he has allowed for Hispanics to come and work and live here despite the fact that so many Americans are out of work.  Who’s paying for that?  Then they take a popularity pole….Popular opinion says, “We hate him.”  Wow! When has a president been hated?  End of part 2

In the Times of Noah

          

          In a civilized society we are taught to be kind to one another. Most of us live just a few steps from one another in our busy impersonal cities.  We come and go, many utilizing public transportation. We eat food prepared by companies that gather it from all over the globe. Most of our children in these times grow up not even knowing many of the foods we eat come from the ground. 

As long as I have lived there has been some sort of disease to be eradicated, however, not usually where I live. Of late pandemic diseases have spread to our neighborhoods. Diseases such as AIDS, Herpes, various drug resistant flues and now even more deadly diseases like Tuberculosis.  Once thought eradicated TB has now again begun killing people in Africa.

TB is especially deadly because it can be passed through the air, by simply being breathed upon.  This strain is uniquely virulent being of a certain strain that is what they refer to as MDR. 

The Problem is the outdated medicines that have been traditionally used to treat TB become ineffective and the disease becomes resistant and mutates.  Becoming something, which cannot be treated, and the prognosis is always death.  It is killing whole families slowly in Swaziland and other places in Africa. Now I know being a middle class person living in America or Europe, you think, “That’s Africa.”   And there was a time where we could send money and never hear another word about it. However, it is a different world now. People travel all over the globe in great numbers. It seems to be a part of being a global society.  My mom remembers when the only time people worked in other countries was if they were in the military or had joined the Peace Corps. In our times it is routine to know people who live and work in other countries and maintain their American citizenship or European birthrights.  I myself know a couple that moved to Brazil. An accountant no less.  How many accountants do you know that consider jobs that are outside the borders of their own country?  With the traveling comes the risks of not only transporting our worldly goods across oceans but also being carriers for diseases that people die from.

My brother has been pretty freaked out about the Ebola crisis. He even began to speak of an apocalypse and we spoke of food and water storage and I told him where the guns were in the family home.

I imagined how the community would band together to communally provide for their needs and assured him not to flee his job or begin to practice irrational thinking just yet.  After that conversation I recalled how just a mere 4 years ago my own son had contracted the H1N1 Virus from the quickly prepared live virus inoculation.  He was at deaths door because I panicked and joined others offering up our children to be experimented on.  I later saw where many had brought suits against the Federal Government for wrongful deaths resulting from that very immunization. 

My son lived, but he was very sick. He fell ill due to the immunization when he snorted a live virus into his body from a vile.

2 Weeks after that, I found him laying in front of our sliding door with it thrown wide to let in the cold night air.  He was unresponsive and running a high temperature.  Just before I dialed 911, I was able to rouse him and get him to his doctor who adamantly denied that it was H1N1.  We treated his symptoms and he lay close to death and then finally just sleeping for 2 weeks!  My mother came to nurse him so I could go back to work.  Yet, no one realized at the time the significance of that event.  I hated myself for all this time and have tried to put it to the back of my memory that occurred. Its like a nightmare, I feel as if it really did not happen. 

Reacting to public hyper vigilant paranoia, I went out beside my better judgment, and got him that immunization. That still haunts me.  He is a healthy person now and is living a full life, I believe because he was blessed by God to live and flourish in spite of his stupid mother. 

What I learned?  Not to react, not to overreact, not to automatically trust what is most important to me in the world to the hands of anyone else.  Not to be persuaded by my emotions.

In trying to keep my precious son from contracting a fatal disease, I actually allowed other well meaning? Government agencies and the CDC who was responding to public pressure to develop an inoculation, quickly, and then to test it on those of us dumb enough to provide the opportunity.  My question now is where was that control element we trust to be there, the one that says, wait a minute?

I heard very little about the H1N1 after our ordeal. We thought surely we would hear something more.  Yet, that is how we are in this society, move forward whether we learned something from our experiences or not, surely there is someone taking notes? 

Or is that someone just me?  

End of part I

The Giver

     

” copyright © 2010-2014 OldTrailer.com retrieved 08/15/2014 Via Pinterest.  

      “Baahaahaahaa,” came out of me as I saw the above trailer coming down the street into our park. I laughed and thought, “Wait until my mom sees this.” My mom?   Wait till the residents in the park see this.

True to my prediction my mother gave birth to a fit, as it was actually parked just 3 mobile lots down from our cute little well maintained summer home, with manicured plantings, and various palms strategically positioned. I looked at my mother in the street with her arms crossed and a look of disgust on her face. I opened the door and laughed again.  “I do not think that is funny.” She said.   I said, “Yes it is, it could not be more awful, it’s comical.” Her face softened and she said,” there is probably some old lady that is as nice as can be living in it too.” (That was the pot calling the kettle black,)

     The neighbor adjacent who lost her parking space and overflow storage with the introduction of the new resident came out to gossip, “I’m leaving! First the landscapers cut the vines on my pumpkins in my garden with the weed eater and now this!” My mom smiles and says, “well officially with the addition of this trailer we are no longer bound to our leases.  So you’re free. “

    

I can see it parked right out my bedroom window.  I dubbed it the Nautilus, an advanced fictional Submarine out of a novel by Jules Vern,
“Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea.” There it was come to life on dry land, in all its rust and algae. 

We did not meet the owner immediately as it took her a few days to arrive.  Mom was out walking her dogs when she sort of met our new neighbor. I would pass and look at the curtainless windows, her car that was wrecked in the back, the tail lamp duct taped.

Then one day we met her, Mom said, “This is Diane, and Diane lives in the silver trailer down on the left.”  My mother all smiles. 

The giver had come into our lives…  And I had thought we were generous people!

 This woman started giving things to us almost immediately. The first time she came to the door, on a stormy night saying, “no one should have to cook on such a stormy night.” In her hands a bag full of TV dinners.   I love TV dinners! Only wish I had a TV.

  Since, we have become the recipients of the Sunday paper, A box of Oatmeal cookies, Yum, =), she and my mom went back and forth with bottles of pop they did not like or could not drink fast enough for a while, and a food processor! (No microwave yet.  We need a microwave.)    

We gave her a recliner from our living room when we bought a new chair and footstool I could relax in and watch the TV I do not have. 

Yesterday, I took her an ear of corn and in return I got a box of dog biscuits.    I then gave her a bag of clothing and a new purse.  The she came with some fish her friend had just caught.  It was delicious!

Often, I have heard my mom tell her that she doesn’t have to give to us in return.  But I like it =) its fun!

As we deliver our gifts back and forth or she passes our place in her car, i have dubbed Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang,

We talk.  Her life has been so sad that it has made me feel guilty for laughing at her Spartan Mansion.  I see her come and go to her job as a deli worker, her car announcing its presence with a familiar chug, chug as she passes our house.  She takes me to the local charity and we stand waiting in line, baking together, our clothing becoming parts of our bodies as we melt in the tropical Florida sun. 

She always speaks of her brother and niece and nephew she has not seen in years. She says,” it’s been at least 20 years since I saw my brother at mom’s funeral.”  She says this and sadly hangs her head.   She always ends the conversation by saying that her brother probably doesn’t even know her husband John had passed away.   

While she was visiting and we were barbequing, mom suggested we see if we could find her family on the computer. Mom told her the story of another person we had found his relatives for him and he had contacted them and reconnected.   I told them that it probably would cost something, as there is no such thing as the white pages except at the library.  Nothing is free anymore.    

But I knew that I could at least get an address. Yet, I could find nothing without paying for a people search.   And even that information was sparse. Sadly we found her brother had passed away some 14 years ago.  

I kick myself now because she was sitting there as I found the information and I blurted out, “and he has died in 1999.” I was reading a line on the screen.  Silence ensued, shock I suppose but no tears.  I apologized and she went on and on thanking me for doing that. 

I was able to get the addresses of her nieces and nephew and she has since written to them. I hope they write back and make a long lost auntie very happy. 

I was hoping to get the maximum out of the service that night thinking I would make a stink the next day and get my money back. But found to my own shock that a friend of mine had also died.  He was my best friend for a time in my life that was pretty unhappy and tumultuous.  Our friendship took my attention off of my troubled circumstances.  Diane and I both spent a sleepless night, thinking of our past and the special people that had gone before us into the great beyond. 

The before photo of the Spartan Mansion and the after photo are a sort of imagining how things could be.  Diane has a gem, a collector’s item, and with some work she could have a really nice home. I see myself out there helping her to polish the aluminum to a glossy mirror finish.  However, the only reflections on her trailer are in my mind.

But for now Diane is satisfied with her new recliner that we put just inside the door, Chitty Chitty Bang, Bang, and making the lives of her neighbors just a little bit nicer by her generosity.  

” copyright © 2010-2014 OldTrailer.com retrieved 08/15/2014 Via Pinterest.