GENERICA

   

New Mexico

     Traveling across the USA  had not been done in my family since the 70's when we moved from Florida to California and then to Washington State.  This time we went south and then east for greener pastures, more job opportunities as the population of the United States burgeons in the West.  Being an unemployed Graduate Student(should that be capitalized like profession...?  If I do not get work soon it will be my profession,"student" ).
     It seems the better a person gets at things the harder it is to find a job. I have been to school for everything. Kindergarten where I would chase a little boy with brown hair to kiss him, he must have been terrorized.  Then on to grade school where a big Italian Girl named Tony beat me up daily(Contrary to developing social say, It did not make me a stronger person)Then to Jr. High where I was alas a social wall flower during the day and a wild party person, stoner at night. Or that is what they called it. I had  come from LA where kids were into different things and the only kids that I fit with were the ones who wanted out of that organized  institutional situation.    When I was a senior I began leaving school whenever I wanted to, a repeat of my earlier days  in  grade school.  After a beating I would leave tearfully, glasses lost,  just hoofing it out the gates with no one alert enough  on the playground to care.  
 Middle School: a broken leg, sitting on the bleachers during PE, or crutching it class to class, too often beating the cruel (tripping and pushing me), gangster girls off with my crutches. 
I was bored with school, not to mention tired of being assaulted  and belittled and discriminated against that when  the big world of knowledge called to me and  sitting behind a desk lost its hold on me.  I got a car in High school after riding a motorcycle for a while. (Wrecking a family car, by backing it up a dark rockey drive with the windows all fogged,"I Got This." I thought, and then a crunch... "you forfeited the red and white Torino from the Starskey and Hutch show in your haste" said dad.  of which I was always reminded of when I complained of the big Yellow Bomb I was stuck with sporting tire skirts and 4 doors.     Hardly a car for a young person.  Yet, I made due.  Loading it up with  as many of my fellow students that were willing to skip school to go adventuring in the world of weekday adults.  
      Shortly after arriving and being accounted for we met in the parking lot.  Usually there were  8 (if we squished), a six pack of beer hidden in the trunk with special sliding speaker grills, and  a pool of cash from each rider for fuel for the big 429/4 barrel.  We  flew down the freeways  to Seattle , the airport, parks and lakes were a backdrop to underage drinking and smoking, and watch the ducks, geese and sailboats on Lake Washington or on a bad day the windshield wipers. More towards summer we went to  the airport where we parked near the  jets taking off and landing to marvel at how low over us those jets got.   Then back to school in time to make the busses.  
We must have thought we were quite clever.  Apparently not clever enough as I one day was called out of my class in the morning by an announcement on the intercom.  I remember that day poignantly, as there I sat waiting for the principal. "Gulp...." Even making peace with the one and only boyfriend I dated my whole high school career, there also to see the "Man" couldn't  distill the  fear in me at that moment.   I remember that day like it was today, my palms perspiring and  my attention distracted to staplers on desks and the blond hardwood chairs which were worn on the arms.  Scenarios of my mother beating me with the broom as I ran away after she was informed of my transgressions made me shiver.  I should clarify a bit: so as  no one thinks my mother a child beater. She used a kind of passive aggressive discipline.  She would confront me and I would lie, lie, lie and then she would grab anything close enough to hit me with.  Sometimes it was a broom or whatever she had in her hand; spatula, garden rake, curling iron, telephone(comical to say the least, as she ran after me until the cord pulled the phone from her hand.)  
As an adult I understand her frustration with me,  I was a willful child, confrontational and argumentative and not very respectful.  I drove her to hitting me, perhaps, psychologically,I did not feel loved if she did not strike me. Who knows?  She now says she struck me as discipline with objects  because I was so solid it caused her pain. 
    So, here is this brat sitting in the principals office contemplating sudden death issues when the door opened and my old friend came out, I think he was smiling.   I thought about reaching out and grabbing that stupid choker he had on and twisting that smile off of his face. (18 year olds are emotional) (Just did not like the guy)   Plus, how could he be smiling, he had just come out of the principals office?
   Then this middle aged, motorcycle riding, polyester pant wearing principal said my name out loud! I acutely remember thinking,"Whose that?" Ducking under his arm as he held the door into his office I went.  
     It was a short meeting, and as I settled in to the same chair I had just vacated, or so it seems.   He pronounced, my sentence," You're a senior?  Right? Correct? Want to graduate?" "Yes, I do want to graduate," "Stay in school" he said.  That was it he got up opened the door again and I exited.  
  No one had called my parents, and I had survived.  I did stay in school and I did graduate.  
     Junior College, law Enforcement: The RCW Laws book was so thick and the class so full of future police officers, I dropped out. The only girl thing did not hold any attraction for me.  
     I then moved back to California and became a Veterinarians Assistant.  Still going to school yet, a different major, DVM.  Unfortunately, I was not focused enough for the mathematics and dropped out again.  Became home sick, alone in Los Angeles and went back to school in Washington.  Journalism and Photography, and graduated! 
     However, the same old story an economically struggling small town had little employment for an idealistic writer. I became briefly employed writing obits and current events like weddings and births. 
     Beauty School:"Cosmetology" at the time cutting hair seems like a fun profession.  I had no idea one had to be a chemist to preform hair coloration. Really that was not it so much as the pedicures, ugh! I do not see the beauty of the foot outside of its functionality. Thank you feet for walking.  I quit at 16,00 hours.  
     Plan B executed, Marriage.  For myself,  a temporal institution as children grow up, and marriage takes two and considering  my marriage, when one person doesn't apply themselves, they get fired.  Staying married had already been attempted for 20 years. Plan C executed, divorce.  
     Because, I  am not the type to disrespect individuals by committing adultery, being single seemed like the right thing to do.  
     Back to school, Plan A: Psychology, Graduated 2011. Yeah!       An original Valley Girl makes good.  Minus the spoon and the long hair sleeping on my front lawn.  

     Leaving the state I had called home for many years did not seem to  make much of an impression on me and may never.    The employment scenario has been bleak, the local job market being a joke with a miss mash of service jobs and local skilled labor fighting over a combination of mill and processing jobs.   I couldn't even get work in an office.  Benefits offered , hugh? What benefits? More joking... the pay always, minimum wage.  Friends, church, not many and none.  Suffering from middle aged schisms. 
     My little car bursting at the seams, with items in order of importance;dog,check,textbooks, check, bicycle on carrier,check, 2 houseplants,toolkit, electric drill,Guitar(bummer won't fit),Pictures,laptop, first aid kit, hiking boots,check, check,and check.   
My mom equally loaded in her car, plan B was executed.  
     Plan A involved a motorhome that once repairs began for the road trip it became cost ineffective and had to be abandoned.  My brother will inherit.  
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>MORE TRAVEL ADVENTURES TO COME<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

I wanted to  write a little about this movie I found on NetFlixs.  All of these things have been bothering me. Lately  about how fake our government has appeared to me as being. How nothing that is said is anything that is done.  Now do not get me wrong, I am and was the last person on the being suspect list as far as our Federal Government is concerned. Then I put a lot of work into an anti horse slaughter Bill. which is and was intended on keeping  American Horses out of the hands of slaughter houses and off the plates of Europeans dinner plates. Horses are not livestock bred for food. They are companion animals devoted to being loved and in return love us back.  They have born man throughout history willingly into battles and finding fortunes and as the basic mode of transport for centuries.   All to be rewarded by being shoved into trailers bound for mexico when their owners can no longer afford to feed them but want a little profit in exchange for their already inhumane treatment of this nobel creature.  They are  horribly treated and then as a practice stabbed in the back until they lose their footing and can be then dragged by a tractor to their painful and undeserved death.  
     I had to use this space to do that, as it is just a mere example of  what is going on. My American Government is also sponsoring the massacre of wild horses which roam free on our  very large open grazing lands across the nation.  It is always kill, kill, kill. After the film of the massacre of the African Elephants as another ignorant government lifted its ban on ivory I started to take a really hard look at what is really going on.  We are moving backwards.   Laws are changing that were put into place by hard work and often blood and miraculous efforts only to be hacked up and forgotten on the floors of the Senate and Congress as our supposed devoted and patriotic representatives fight over who should get raises and huge retirements for their elected temporary positions.   
     Its not just the animals that are suffering. 
      America has millions without health care and after all of this arguing we still have no healthcare! Then I found out that 17 million children are going hungry in the most prosperous nation in the world.  WTH!!!! 
     What is being seen and what we know is; I am finding all lies.   Look around at all the inequities?  It is true that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  It is true that our President is out of touch with the real America, it is true that we have a system that is broken.  The reason I have struggled with what many have already accepted,I am a positive person and do not like to believe the worst. However, I cannot ignore the obvious any longer, I am not stupid.  Yet, all I hear from everyone is,"there is nothing I can do." and I began to feel that way also.  However, after seeing this movie I feel like there is something I can do.  AND: there is something we all can do.  Together as a nation of intelligent people we can  make a change towards having the world we want to live in.   
     Lets all decide what that looks like and speak about it, then lets live it.   Lets not just vote our conscience lets also buy our conscience.  What does that look like?  don't  buy anything that costs something its life, example: the ivory trade is blooming again because the Chinese want real carved artifacts in their living rooms rather than the substitutes available.  It looks the same and  wether it is made from genuine ivory or resin it will all go to dust as they grow tired of it. Unfortunately, the creatures that supplied that ivory had to die so a newly rich Chinese wanted to make a vain social statement.   
    Every  living  thing on planet earth is endangered now and as we pave over our farmland for parking lots and exploit everything into extinction we are ourselves stealing the future from our own very children and grandchildren.  

Let us all stop and think how we can make a difference. Is it a small beginning as getting recyclable bags and compositing?  Or perhaps with that next car replacement ditching the truck for a hybrid?  The next time you see a crushed cat or raccoon or deer or possum on the highway ask yourself who would  run something over and not get out and  move it to the side and feel ashamed that we live in a world full of so much carelessness.  Do you ever ask yourself why? Why do they have to kill everything? Why does your neighbor have to use poison on the moles instead of an herbal mixture that works just as well and does not endanger the other creatures which abound?  
In my  area I have seen his deer wandering around with what looks like fishermen's nets and tackle on his antlers.  He is an older deer and will not lose his antlers as the fish and game officers have said.  I asked myself why do they not come out and find him and do their jobs (which I pay their salaries with my taxes) to help the creatures?  They told a local who did call, one of many that the antlers will just fall off.  Hugh?   
Not so, 4 months after I saw him he is still wandering around like that.  Its a miracle  he is still alive.  

In another time we would have made a movie about the poor deer, and named him something appropriate to signify his plight.In this tale the game ranger would have been the hero.  Now no one cares.  I ask myself Why?  Do you?  

A Sure Thing

                                     

Hurricane Sandy!! Family in Maine preparing.  Water? Check,  lanterns and flashlights? Check, Fresh Batteries? Check,  Is the car tied down?  Ugh, not sure about that..... The newspeople can sure make a case for "The Biggest Storm in History." We wait to see.  That is the way it is when we are human and subject to the almighty, non-predicatable power of mother nature.  I watch the 3 boats tied out past the jetty pitch and sway in the already choppy waters.  We heard many stories of people calling their mooring facilities to ask if their boats could be taken out of the water.  How does one access this?  Why would anyone think their boats would be better out of the water where they will be beaten by the wind and an obvious target for flying debris and trees that become uprooted.   Then there are those who tie up in their slips and those that anchor out in the bay.  Is there not a science to this or is it much like hurricane Sandy and other storms of that magnitude, maybe she will and maybe she won't.  One man said," well the last time my boat ended up in Florida when the lines broke, I'll see if she is there in the morning." A few beers later I saw him stumble out, The story about his boat in Florida, maybe its true maybe it isn't. However, it is pretty plausable that he will not be out there holding his lines in the middle of the storm.  At least thats for sure..