I am back in town and will be around the blogsphere in a couple days after things re-stabilize and will have a story to tell.  Thank you all so much for your prayers, kind words and thoughts.

My Mom passed away at about 2:30 this A.M.  Got a call from mom's pastor, he was staying with my dad so he wouldn't be alone.  If you hear from me or get any visits it will be sporadic at best as we try to get ready for the 1300 mile trip to Wisconsin.

Thanks for all your prayers and support.

Today is, apparently, left-handers day.  Since I haven't had time to do a real update, I thought I'd give you few links and change the poll to something about handedness.  I am slowly working on a couple of updates for you as well.  The antibiotics seem to have helped but I still have this barky cough.

http://www.lefthandzone.com/site/684713/page/45029

http://www.lefthandersday.com/index.html

http://www.lefthandedchildren.org/

http://www.lefthandedchildren.org/letter-formation.htm

Also, here are the results from the last two polls:

Thanks to all of you who have stuck with me!  You guys are the greatest.

Remember. the Good Book says, "Among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men lefthanded; every one could sling stones at an hair breadth, and not miss."

Well, the drugs are beginning to take effect and I am feeling somewhat better.  I still have a broken laptop, though, and can’t find enough peace and quiet all at one time to work on anything much.  I did find a few half-entries on my flash-drive and will try to remember what I was writing and do them.  Thanks again to all of you who tag me and leave comments.  I am often in awe at the quality of writers and bloggers who stop by.  I do try to reciprocate you.

I really don't know what to do for time to write.  When I feel good I get up at 3 and make coffee, check e-mail and respond to it, and then look at my blog and see who's tagged me and stop off there first, then go and visit everyone else's blogs.  Margaret gets up between 4 and 4:30 so I have approximately an hour on the computer when I can think and type.  During the day as I sit in the car waiting for her to get done with her clients I could type on the laptop.  Now the house and the computer are busy seemingly around the clock.  She used to get up at 5:00 - 5:30 which gave a little extra time, too.

It isn't only that there are people on the computer, but I have a hard time concentrating with all of the conversations going on and all of the "Dad, this" and the "Dad, thats."  So when I do get on the computer during the day, sometimes I will try to make it to all the blogs I missed but there again, it can be difficult concentrating on reading if the article is somewhat in-depth.

Okay.  That's enough of all that for now.  Have I earned my cheese and crackers yet?

Remember (Herb) the good book says, "Thou shalt not whine."

Got this over at Chrysalis' Blog.  The loss of the laptop has affected my blogging, but I will try to keep the momentum up that I had going.  Plus, I have been sick and it turned into Bronchitis and was prescribed Antibiotics and the "Good" cough medicine.  I am very sensitive to drugs (they used to call me "two-can" back in my drinking days.) and it either makes me loopy or conks me out.  For the daytime when I'm driving they told me to take an over-the-counter thing, so we'll see what happens.  Life has been happening also, but I am not at liberty to discuss some of the big things yet, but I will bring them to you when it is appropriate.

Thanks to all of you who have stuck with me, some from the beginning, and especially everyone who leaves comments.  Comments are very important to me.

I normally hate doing memes, but this one was sufficiently different to keep my attention.

1. When did you start blogging and why?  Monday, 04 October 2004.  My first entry was entitled "To Blog or Not To Blog" and the entry began,

"To blog or not to blog, that was my question
Whether 'twas nobler in my mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous statements of noodle heads
Or to take up "Pen and Paper" against a sea of troublesome thoughts
And by blogging them out, thereby end them?"

2. How do you use blogging to build friendships?  I don't think I really use it for that, it just happens.  If someone visits my blog, I try to visit theirs back.  After you read a person's writing for a while, you get to know them.  Not all friendships are equally close, however.  I feel I have made some really good friends though.

3. Who do you read every day, rain or shine?  I have a list of about 30 I try to hit every single day, but it is in sore need of being updated so I took the blogroll down.  I am planning to do another entry with an updated list.

4. Why did you choose to share that piece of yourself in a photograph?  If this question is meant about the profile pic, it's my favorite.  My daughter Abi took it and we fixed the background.  I think it's the "real" me and explains why some Indians believed that part of your spirit could be captured by the camera and refused to be photographed.

5. How would you describe your writing style?  Down-to-earth, conversational.

6. If you could spend time with one person (other than your spouse, because really, let's not rack up the suck up points here)?  George W. and Laura Bush.

7. What don't you write about?  Personal things about other people, even other family members.

8. How do you feel about meeting bloggers in real life? Are you nervous? Will you have great expectations?  Never have, but think it might be fun.  Since I am a tee totaling Prohibitionist I don't like to go to bars.  For a partial explanation of this position, read my entry, "Dead Drunk."  I have a hard time abiding drunk people, partly because the first thing they will insist to you is that they are not drunk, they've "Jusht had a couple."  That being said, there are some people I would love to meet in person.

9. Is there one blogger in particular that you find mirrors yourself?  I think Daveman might have at times.

10. What is your favorite thing that you wrote?  That is a tough one because I really put a lot of work into everything I write.  The list in the sidebar shows some of my favorites.

11. Have you written anything controversial?  Yes and I plan to again, too.  I write about whatever I feel like and if someone is offended, well, I don't purposely try to offend, but this blog is about ME and what I think or feel about things.

12. Are you and your blogging persona the same person?  Yeah.  I'm a rotten liar, faker or bluffer and never won a poker game in my life.  This is me.

13. Have you ever anonymously posted on a site to flame them?  Never.  If I comment somewhere, you know it was me.

14. If you had a super power, what would it be?  Invisibility

15. Which five bloggers do you want to answer these questions?  Since I think this is an interesting meme I would just like to see everybody do it on, but on their own, the way Pops did.

When I got that first job at the drugstore back in 1974 (see the entry "Changed"), I learned a lot.  I don't know how much I knew I was learning at the time, but I think back and a few things stand out.

I learned:

If you get out of bed early on Saturday morning and go to work, you can make money.

Working hard helps make you more money.

More money means more Tombstone Pizzas and Coca-Colas and comic books and sci-fi books, especially if your family can't buy you these things whenever you want them.

If you don't sweep and mop in the corners every Saturday, nobody will notice.

If you never sweep and mop in the corners, they will.

Always rotate stock.  Put the older stuff toward the front, even if it means taking everything off the shelf.

While you have everything off the shelf, clean the shelf.

Respect everybody; you never know when the scruffy old guy in the beat-up fishing hat is your boss's grandfather.

Or the mayor.

Prophylactic devices are behind the register, in the third drawer on the right and you shouldn't shout across the store, "Hey Keith!  Where do we keep the, what was it, prophylactic devices?"  Back then such things were not on display and, believe it or not, I didn't have a clue what they were or what they were for.  Until Keith told me, "You know some people get embarrassed when you talk about things like that, especially across the store."  "What?"  "Rubbers."  "Oh."

But really, one of the most interesting things about the job was watching him work the art of the apothecary.  They don't do this much nowadays in drugstores and pharmacies, but back then it was more common.  Old folks especially, who remembered Keith's grandfather, would come into town from all over the county and ask for concoctions that had been made at that counter since the store opened.  A little old gal would come in and ask for an arthritis cream that Keith's father or uncle used to make for her.

Keith had been a sailor at one time and could be a little gruff, a Camel "straight" dangling from his lower lip all the time while he was working or talking, but he always had respect for the old folks that came in.  I think all of the merchants in our town did because in a small farming community it is the plain ol' folks that started your business and kept it in business.  Even though the town was a tourist trap even back then, the locals were always respected.

I should say he used to have a camel cigarette dangling from his lower lip, but we're getting to that.

Anyway, he felt, even in 1974, that the world was losing an art by losing the old-fashioned apothecary and that he should try to keep these traditions going as long as he could.  He also knew there was a very tidy profit in it as well, extra work or not and two more things I learned from that job is that, besides a desire to provide a service to the community, people go into business to make money and it pays to be an informed buyer.  He never cheated or skimped on a prescription or a concoction, however, using only the best, most expensive ingredients and passing the cost on.

So these little old gals would come in and he would put aside the gruffness and get out a sheet of special waxed paper and put a glop of cream on it.  In a locked drawer behind the prescription counter was a small, leather-bound black journal filled with scrawlings made in Latin and written in fading fountain-pen ink.  He would let me page through it, even though I couldn't make sense of it (or maybe because I couldn't make sense of it) because he saw the fondness and reverence I had toward the artifact.  I love old books and things of that sort, always have.  He would take ingredients down from various brown bottles and grind them in a mortar and pestle, then mix them into the base cream and have me fetch the appropriate jar to put it in.  Then he would call the customer, who swore by the stuff.

I also learned that there were drug abusers in the world.  We used to be able to sell cough syrup that contained Codeine over the counter, but Keith had a system he used that he had learned from his uncle and father.  I don't recall if it was a law or not.  If someone wanted to buy some cough medicine, I could recommend any kind but "the good stuff," which was kept on a shelf in the back room, out of plain sight and only available to customers that asked for it that were known people to either Keith or Paul (his uncle that worked with us in busy seasons) who were the only ones allowed to sell it.  If the person wasn't known to them, but looked like they were probably okay, (I didn't know all the signs of a drug abuser or "dope" then) he would make them sign and date a logbook they kept.  I remember one time a guy had come in and bought a bottle of wine and wanted to buy some "good" cough medicine.  Keith just told him we didn't have any.  "I know you guys have.  You all have it.  I really, really want some."  "Sorry pal.  I also have the number to the Police (there was no "911" and all we had were rotary dial phones that were attached to the wall.) Department, too."  The guy practically flew out the door, and Keith explained that the guy would drink the bottle of wine and the bottle of cough syrup together and get stoned.  I was shocked.  The idea of taking more than the proper dose of a medicine just boggled my poor, sheltered little brain.

Keith could make his own cough syrups, too.  They were very expensive and used strange ingredients I had never heard of as well as copious amounts of pure alcohol and Codeine and flavorings.  These recipes also came from his little book and as I said, had a high cost attached to them.

One day after Keith had me fetch the ingredients for a large bottle of one of his cough medicines, he went to work, trademark Camel dangling from his lip.  I had walked away while he was very carefully measuring an exact amount of this, and exactly so much of this other and I was waiting on a customer when throughout the store rang the loudest, most profane string of curse-words I had ever heard.  And many I had never heard.  The customer left as I ran toward the back, picturing my boss lying in a pool of blood and me having to look up the ambulance number, but it was nothing like that.

There he stood cursing and swearing, sans cigarette.  I saw the butt of the cigarette snuffed out in the test tube.  The ash from the cigarette had fallen from it right into the almost finished product.  My laughter did not lighten his mood any and there were many colorful descriptive terms for physically impossible things that came out of his mouth.  I was sent to work the rest of the day cleaning a disused storeroom in an unfinished part of the basement, affectionately known as The Dungeon.  "Go clean the blankity-blank, double-expletive deleted, blankity-blank-blank-blank dungeon!  There's nothing funny about this blankity-blank-blank-blank it anyway."  I had never, ever seen him that mad or red in the face.  I was afraid he was going to kill me or worse yet, fire me right then and there and bye-bye pizza and Coke.  Cleaning the dungeon was worse than getting killed, but I still had my job.  By Monday he was laughing and joking about it himself.

So I learned another thing from that job.  I know some might take me task for saying this, but the way he strung those words together was almost artistic, eloquent, and even poetic or beautiful.  Not just the one word that is now common everywhere, especially certain types of sounds erroneously referred as music by some, but a string that never reused a word.  This may be very bad to say (and it has been a very long time since I have done this myself and emulated his speech) but his alliterations were where they should be with a flowing rhythm.  He was not repetitive or redundant and if you are not living as a Christian you would almost have to be envious of his broad vocabulary.

Yes, there was one more thing I learned from that first job, I learned to cuss like a sailor!  Or don't laugh your ash off.

Remember, the Good Book says, "And thou shalt make it an oil of holy ointment, an ointment compound after the art of the apothecary..."

Thanks to all of you for your kind words and encouraging comments and everyone's support.

I especially wish to thank Pops, for writing so eloquently and often poignantly about his father's last days.  It has been comforting in this time since mom has gotten sick.  She is steadily declining to the point where I have to decide whether to make the trek to Wisconsin to see her one last time (Which was kind of why her church sent her out here) only to turn around and go back again for a funeral or wait.

Savannah and the miniature poodle, Boston Blacky, have become quite attached to each other.  The other day she sat down with him and took the dog's food, poured it into his water bowl and, spoon in hand, commenced to eat it like cereal.  Until Tabitha caught her and made her quit.

The laptop is still belly-up so updates are not as quick as they were, but there is a man in the church who is a tech and will look at it for me.  Hopefully he can do something.

Remember, the Good Book says, "Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain..."

Not much time to update since the laptop went belly-up but here are a couple of things, "hot off the wire."  Mom was in the hospital last couple of days, didn't sound very good at all, but they pulled her through.  My brothers, who live there in Shawano area, had to choose a nursing home for her, though, so she will be moving.  Dad had been working so hard helping her that he was gonna get sick and this was the final blow.  I know my brothers know the area and the local scuttlebutt and can make a better decision than I could.

Giant youth conference at the church called, "Heritage," meant to teach the old-time religion to a new generation.  Oftentimes people are quick to just dump the old ways of doing things without looking into why some of those things were put into effect in the first place.  Ashley, who has a gaggle of girls staying with her, has been talking about it a little on her blog.

Speaking of blogs, in response to Jerry saying that it getting too political could hurt it, when I first started this, the 4th entry I ever did, in fact, said,

"Just a note of explanation now that i have sent out a mail to all my friends and family about this blog.  I have a wide variety of friends from a wider variety of ideologies.  What this means to you, gentle reader (don't ya love Miss Manners?), is that some of you will wonder why there isn't more church stuff, or more political stuff, or more writing stuff, or more funny/weird stuff and while you are wondering about that, the other people will be wondering exactly the opposite, e.g., why so much church or politics, or who cares about the difference between a trochee and an iambus and if he's such a big-time, fancy-schmancy writer, why does he use ridiculously long, yea, verily even, run on, sentences?

"Oh, and i MUST clarify one other thing.  I really am not a big-time writer.  I have had a couple of very minor pieces printed in a vanity press.  This is where this exercise is supposed to come in handy.  I get to practice on my friends and relatives and any total stranger that happens to stroll by."

So, you probably want to keep that in mind.  I don't intentionally offend, but I don't see any reason to sugarcoat anything I believe or think or else the idea of a web-log, an online-journal, becomes a little silly to me.

Remember, the good book says, "To thine own self be true."  Or was that the Bard?

I have said before that Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is probably one of the most important books a person can and should read.  While Orwell's 1984 may be more accurate I think Bradbury leaves us with a true glimmer of hope, which Orwell does not.  Both books should be read by every member of every society and if you do read 1984, when you get to the end, take a piece of paper and cover the last paragraph, especially the last sentence of the book.  Don't let yourself read that until the very end.  It gave me cold goosebumps and nightmares.  Fahrenheit 451 did not do that, exactly, but made a vivid, lasting impression on me when I first read it when I was 15 and the several times I've read it since.

If you are not familiar with Bradbury's story, it is set in a future time surprisingly like our own in a country very much like ours.  The Protagonist, Guy Montag, is a fireman of the time whose job is not to put fires out, but to start them.  Houses are all fireproof but books have been outlawed completely.  If you are found to own a book, your books and house are all burned and you are imprisoned.  The title comes from the temperature at which book paper combusts.  Written in the early 50's, Bradbury describes a society where people never go anywhere without their "ear-bud" radios plugged into their ears.  They watch TV on giant, wall-sized screens and never do anything else.

Books came to be outlawed by a process remarkably similar to the "Political Correctness" we see today.  Some group found a certain book to be offensive and protested its printing, held burnings and got it banned from libraries.  Another group found a different book offensive.  Some found the Bible offensive, others found other writings offensive as all the while the people became less and less involved with the government and how it was run and more and more involved in personal entertainment.  They eventually became so complacent and believed the propaganda spewed into their ear-buds and out of their TVs that it was not difficult for the government to pass laws, at first outlawing only certain books nobody ever really cared about or read anyways.  The people continued feeding their minds on the pap from the carefully crafted, inoffensive TV shows while the government banned more and more books until finally all books were against the law.

It all started out with people being made to believe they could not say whatever they wanted for fear of offending someone or some group while at the same time others became so thin-skinned that they took everything as a personal insult and provocation.  The right not to be offended took the place of the right to free speech.

(Obviously, there are some books that may belong on public or private library shelves that are not appropriate for a middle-school library and you can read my piece on book banning to learn how to deal with that and when.)

Here in the United States we place a very high value on our Freedom of Speech.  It was the first one of ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution that we refer to as "The Bill of Rights."  "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."  This has been interpreted to include a large number of things I don't know that the founders intended or could even have imagined, but any American citizen has the right to say whatever they want about whatever they want without fear of retaliation.  Our law even protects works of art as well as political speech and prohibits the government from establishing a state religion while also prohibiting the government from interfering with any religion.  It is a great law, but the Supreme Court has given it some few limits.  For instance, you cannot go into a crowded theater and yell "fire!" when there is no fire.  We are protected from libel and slander as well.

So, if you want to make a statement by burning the very representation of your country that fosters this right, well, okay.  Personally I don't understand it and you will never get me to acknowledge your ideas by doing it.  It is the type of thing the REVEREND Fred Phelps' followers do.  You can say what you want and do what you want because we are free; I just hope you also have the poor judgment to do it at a V.F.W. July 4th celebration because I think that if you are one of these ignorant, inarticulate, irreverent fools who believe burning the flag makes some sort of statement, you would deserve what you got.

I don't know if protestors even use this anymore.  I think nowadays it's flag-waving that everyone does.  (You can ask Carter about living in Washington State where protestors drive their cars sporting their yellow ribbons to protests where they spit on returning soldiers and scream vitriolic epithets at them.)  Anti-war hippie protestors of the 60's and 70's that used to burn the flag appear to have learned that most people, regardless of which side of the aisle they are on, don't have any respect for them when they do this.  Besides, it has been established that this is a legal form of free speech which kind of takes the edge off it.  It used to be a deeply shocking and dangerous form of expression, but now the people they are protesting just say, "Well, you have the right to say what you want."  So I don't know how much this even actually goes on any more, if at all.  I did read about a neighborhood in New York that had 8 homes' flags and poles burnt, one being the flag of their fallen Marine son, but this sort of thing is already covered in vandalism and arson laws and is not about free speech.

Aside from the fact that we value our freedom of speech so highly in this country there are several valid, practical questions to consider as well, a few of which my liberal blog-buddy Jerry brought up a while ago.  If it's against the law to burn the flag, does that include any and all flags?  The paper one the newspaper prints every year?  A photo of the flag?  A 3x5 cotton flag?  A confederate flag?  A Christian flag?  A Union Jack?  The flags of other nations?  A photo of someone burning the flag?  What is the purpose and intent?  To protect us from the one irreverent (and usually irrelevant) fool that feels the need to express himself this way?  What if someone wants to hold an anti-religion rally and burns a Bible?  Or a Koran?  None of these things are things I would do, nor would most right-thinking people who are interested in communicating their beliefs and actual debate.  It's like name-calling, you stinky poop-head.

Besides, shouldn't you include the guy's house I see every day that has a filthy, faded U.S. flag and tattered POW flag that you can barely read the words on?  Isn't that equally disrespectful and disgraceful, if not more so?  I don't think the flag that flew over Fort Sumter is in as rough condition.  There are way too many people who, in what I desperately hope is patriotic fervor, fly dilapidated, tattered pieces of cloth that excuse themselves as flags.  Those little flags that you attached to your car on 9/12/01 that are just little strips of cloth (or plastic) need to be changed now, sir.  What started out as a national solidarity under the proudest flag that's ever flown over the greatest country in the world, has turned into something of an embarrassment.  I think the real problem is that many people do not really know they are doing something wrong.  The Boy Scouts have put together a nice little easy-to-read guide for proper flag handling and the VFW has put together a little more in-depth flag etiquette and history, including a little more detailed instruction on disposing of a flag that is no longer serviceable.

To me this was a poorly conceived electioneering device and the elected officials from both sides ought to be ashamed of themselves.  Come on, you guys; do some real work for a change.

Remember, the good book says, "Let despots remember the day/When our fathers with mighty endeavor/Proclaimed as they marched to the fray/That by their might and by their right/It waves forever."  Or was that Sousa?

Whether to adress the comments I have received in the comments section or as another entry was difficult.  Apparently blogging is like everything else in life, people hear what they want to hear and read what they want to read.  The comments on part II indicate a lack of understanding of part I, thus, part III.  I really wanted to get on to other things, but I don't like my words misunderstood or worse, purposely misconstrued, so a final outing (pun intended) on the subject seems necessary since .

But where to start?  I guess first is the claim that Society must be educated.  This may be true.  Society needs to be educated that almost all pedophiles are male and one third of all sex crimes are comitted against boys.  81% of sex crimes committed against children by Roman Catholic priests during the past 52 years were homosexual men preying on boys.  A copiously documented article by a Ph. D. on the subject is here:  http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS02E3 along with a brochure by the same doctor: http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=BC04C02

To say that allowing this change is not going to lead to anything else is a head-in-the-sand approach.  Establish gay marriage and polygamy will be next.  As I said previously, it may not be in the near future, but it will come.

As to comparing the issue to the civil rights movement of the 60's you will find that many black people find a comparison offensive.  Colin Powell from his book , "My American Journey":  [In testimony before Congress on gays in the military], I said, "I think it would be prejudicial to good order and discipline to try to integrate gays and lesbians in the current military structure." Congresswoman Pat Schroeder quoted a 1942 government report and claimed that the same arguments used then against racial integration in the military were being used against gays today.  She had her logic wrong. I responded, "Skin color is a benign, nonbehavioral characteristic. Sexual orientation is perhaps the most profound of human behavioral characteristics. Comparison of the two is a convenient but invalid argument. The linking of gay rights and the civil rights movement got a mixed reaction in the African-American community. The Congressional Black Caucus favored removing the ban on homosexuals in the armed services. But other leaders were telling me that they resented having the civil rights crusade hijacked by the gay community for its ends.

So no, it isn't about that.

Yes, this country was founded because of religious persecution, usually, as has been the case since John the Baptist was beheaded, because they preached against the sin and immorality of the time.  The pilgrims preached against the established religious practices and immoral behavior of political leaders and were shipped out rather than burnt at the stake.

Besides, the "religious" arguments at the end of Part II were intended for Conservatives and Christian believers.  Obviously non-believers will disregard this part, although most married people have said the Scripture I quoted in their vows.

The Good Book says, "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."