New Picture

I decided to bite the bullet and appear as I am. This picture was taken by my Aunt at Multonomah Falls in the Columbia River Gorge. We were on our way to Vancouver, Wa for my oldest Grandson's wedding. I'm eating an ice cream cone. That's okay, everybody eats, right. I guess I hate to show the roly poly me, thinking that people who see the picture will judge me by my weight. Like,"Wow, What a pig she is!" I see other people, people that I know and like and They may be a little rotund, but I never seem to notice it much. It always looks better on others than ourselves, it seems. I guess that we are usually our own harshest critics. It shouldn't be that way though. We're not supposed to judge people, and that's hard enough to stop doing. Somehow, we seem to think that it's okay to judge ourselves. It's not okay though. Still, I keep doing it. So here I am, in all my flawed beauty. It's okay though, we're all a little flawed. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here, trying to live our lives, make a little contribution when we can and try to learn a thing or two to get us to the next stage, right?

Looking at Life

I've always believed that life is beautiful and good. I know that isn't true for some people. I isn't even true for me 100% ofthe time, but for most of the time, it is true for me. I know that there are some people who are full of pain and fear. There are people who are full of anger,who blame others for their own pain and don't seem to be happy unless they can make someone unhappier than themselves. That is very sad, for them and anyone around them.

I know that there are people who have been through hell in their lives but have managed to build lives that are good. The hell doesn't go away totally, it just assumes a lesser importance most of the time. They manage to take positive energy and keep that foremost in their lives and keep a wary eye on the negative energy that tries to sneak up and sap them.

I sometimes think that you need to surround yourself with as much beauty as you can find, whatever moves you and is beauty to you. When life slaps you down, and it does, grab onto whatever it is that brings you a sense of beauty and love, no matter how small, and use it as a shield to protect yourself from the negative, the pain and ugliness that is out there.

I generally look toward music and nature and ,of course, family and certain friends that I can count on. The best friend is within, that part of me that is part of Spirit, who can see what I can't always see, that God is with us all, loving us, just as we are, always. Sometimes it's hard to believe, but we each are lovable and worthy, even when we have lost our way, even the person who wounds you is loved. God is the ultimate Father, loving and forgiving all.

The Dog Days of August

We had some hot days lately. I worked, so at least I was in air conditioning. Even so, it was rough as I was not feeling well. Friday I awoke to a very sore throat. I figured it was from post nasal drip. I couldn't afford to lose hours, so I went to work. After an hour or so, I felt really lousy. I haven't been getting enough sleep lately, so was probably a prime target to a virus or something. I ended up going home early. I took vitamin C, forced fluids and went to bed early. Saturday was better.My throat was still a little sore, but I managed to get through the day. I wanted to sleep in,but woke up as usual. Oh well, it's Sunday, I'll take it easy.

We had a really nice rain storm this morning. I hope we get more. It will save me watering tomorrow. It's supposed to be in the low 80s for awhile, a nice change from 100s! Our tomatoes are rippening well now. It's so great. The cucumber isn't putting out much, and the ones that do grow are a bit bitter tasting. I'll have to figure out why before next year.

It is hard to believe that summer is almost over. It seems like June was yesterday!

Judgement

I'm not sure why we humans feel the need to make judgements of each other. Not only do we make judgemsnts, we catagorise and label as well. Judgements are not ours to make, we are really not evensupposed to judge ourselves. We do it anyway. It is a very harmful practise, both for the judgee and the judger.We label and pigeonhole each other, then wonder why feelings are hurt. It's only an opinion, right? Wrong! It takes on something that we aren't qualified or in a Christian sense, even allowed to do. One reason we should not judge is because we don't know enough. We can't see into the heart and soul of the person we are judging. We often don't even understand our own hearts and souls!

I've always liked the saying from the Native Americans. " Don't judge someone until you have walked a mile in their mocasins". There's another quote, " He who is without sin, may throw the first stone" I think that one pretty much removes all of us from the ability to judge!

For the last several years of my life, I have tried not to judge others. to say that it is a difficult thing is an understatement. One of the things I've tried to learn is to accept people as they are. This is something I learned from my beloved daughter, who was "different". I think it is very hard to get past the tribal attitudes of "us and them". If you aren't one of us, you must be one of them. If you are different, you aren't me or part of mine. Unfortunately, dispite progress, we still revert to tribalism, though it may be seen as something else, it is still a more primitive part of our phyche.

Sometimes, a person thinks they are just offering an opinion, helping you to see yourself. Really, you can have any opinion you want to have, but if it's hurtful, keep it to yourself. If your opinion is so strong that you can't accept a person, then remove yourself and let the relationship go. Hurtfullness in the guise of helping is not a good thing.

More Geneology

I've been doing a little catch up on my family tree, trying to pare down some of the duplicate people and eliminate some children from some of the huge families, especially when they are far back in time.I'm still at over 9800 people in the tree!

I ran into a fun name recently. His name was Flaad Banquo De Dinan, born in 994 and died in 1064. He was born in the Pyrenese Mountains. His wife was named Muldevana De Atholl, born in 998. I'm glad his name was Flaad and not Vlaad. The area is too close for comfort. Maybe I'll do a little more research.

The Scottish clan keeps growing, I enjoy looking at Scottish travel sites and seeing what the areas of our ancestors looks like now. Much of our people came from Midlothian. It really looks beautiful. Maybe someday, I'll get to the UK and check out all the places our people came from. Of course, most of them came from the UK, but there were quite a few from France, Germany, Switzerland, Norway and Belgium. I'm not sure I'd be able to check out everything.I should have started sooner.

Yesterday, I found an ancestor who was born in 445; Chilperic K Deburgundy. His father was born in 420, can you believe it?His name was Gendioc of the Burgundians and his wife, born 438 was named Basina of Thuringia. That's in what is now Germany. It's really interesting to be seeing ancestors who were alive before there was a Germany or France or England. Their world was so different from ours,it's hard to imagine their lives.

I'm still pretty much at a dead end with the Haggerty line. I can't seem to connect Ireland with the U.S yet. I keep plugging away though. Someday, it may all open up for me.

Disturbing Atmosphere.

The political atmophere today is quite disturbing to me. The disent at some of the town meetings going on about health care reform is not just heated debate. It seems more hateful. There are things being said that are difficult to understand. People are painting swastikas on signs around places of meetings, they are complaining about things that are going to happen if Obama's changes go through that don't seem to have any relationship to facts.

There are people who are still saying that Obama was born in Kenya. Like the State of Hawaii is lying, all of them. Unfortunately, there will always people who will believe only what they want to believe, never mind those pesky facts.

There are people who are saying that the reforms will cause old people to be euthanised. This rumor can be traced to the House GOP leadership. There are fake "grassroot"organiszations that are being run by suspect people. Freedom Works is run by former House majority leader Dick Armey. Conservatives for Patient's Rights is run by Rick Scott, former head of Columbia/HCA, a for profit hospital chain. Mr Scott was forced out of that job due to an investigation for fraud. The company finally pleaded guilty of over billing State and Federal health plans. They paid out 1.7 Billion dollars in fines!

Many people say they disapprove of "any"form of socialised or government run healthcare.The surprising thing is that nearly half of those questioned were on Medicare. They don't seem to realise that medicare is a government program.

There seem to be genuinely angry people out there, but what has them angry? I was approached by a person while I was at work. He took one of my samples, made some small talk, then started talking about all the "reverse racial discrimination out there, since that communist became President". For a moment I was struck speechless. I told him that I wasn't paid to talk politics, only food, but I was disturbed. This has happened to me before,from people that I thought I knew. I live in a very conservative state, especially once you get out of Salt Lake City. But our store is practically downtown. This is disturbing.

I read Jack Krugman's colunm as well as some others in the New York Times, admittedly a little on the liberal side. There are signs of cultural and racial anxiety among people. I guess they expected Obama to wave a magic wand and all would be well. Now everyone thinks he's not living up to his promises. There are cynical political operatives out there who are fanning the flames, stiring up the angry white man. It seems to me that the republicans don't just want to keep the staus quo on health care, they think failure of reform will ruin Obama's presidency and open up things for them to come back to business as usual. Heaven help us all.

I Don't Know

The title of this post may be a little strange, but still is how I feel. There are lots of things I don't know, way more than what I do know. I guess that is true of all of us. Still, there are some things that it is scary not to know. One of those things has to do with being unable to take away the pain from a beloved child. When your children are tiny, you try to protect them from all harm if you possibly can. As they grow, you have to gradually let them have more freedom. One of those freedoms is to experience life and risk getting hurt. When they do get hurt, you soothe them and try to "make it all better". Unfortunately, the older they get, the harder it is to "make it all better". Eventually, they stand without you, and deal with their own hurts. Now they are grown and you just hope that, somehow, you've helped them to be strong enough to withstand life.You have to accept the fact that there will be others who will be there for your child. Now , you hope and pray that those people in a position to help or hinder your child will be the helpful kind.

My daughter seemed to be lucky enough to have people who cared about her and took care of her. Because she would always need to be taken care of, I tried to be very careful and keep track of those who were in a position to make positive or negative impacts in her life. It helped that she was pretty fiesty as well.

My son, who was always so bright and loving, wanting to do things for himself, has always been the bright spot in my life. I could usually depend on him to eventually tell me when he had done something wrong, like the time he tried pot. It took him awhile, but he came to confess it. Imagine how surprised I was to learn that he had suffered horrible treatment from someone when he was young, and I didn't find out for over 30 years! My conclusion for this is that he suffered so much shame from this treatment, that he somehow blamed himself, that he couldn't talk about it. After all, how do you tell your Mother that you have been abused? And you didn't have a very sympathetic father I suppose.

One of the big things I don't know, is how to"make it all better". It is probably not even possible. He can learn to deal with the pain and go on with his life, but I don't know how to help him do that either. I can be grateful for the wife he has chosen. She is truly his "help mate". I can be grateful for his belief in a compassionate God. I can love him as unconditionally as I am able, being only human. I wish I could turn back time and make it as if it never happened, but that is impossible.

One of the things I do know. In God's eyes we are perfect, that core of us inside that is part of God, is perfect, beautiful,wonderful and good. To my Son I say, "You are perfect and have a beautiful soul, I know it to be true".