I have to wear a cocktail dress. Have you ever done that?
Nope. I wore my wedding dress & last year I wore a formal.
Hmm...I've never even shopped for a cocktail dress. I don't think I can walk in heels either.
Wear ballet slippers. That's what I wear.
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
Image of van found on eBay...
When I was in college, I volunteered at a group home for childre
n living with HIV and AIDS. It was a huge, older two story home in the heart of the city. I believe there were 18 permanent residents there. They were wards of the state, yet they were not in foster care. Their mothers had either abandoned them, were imprisoned and a shocking large amount of them were deceased. These were the children that were born unto this world with HIV. They were, for the most part, children unknown to our society.
One little girl, maybe 3 or 4, with chocolate brown hair...wild & curly and eyes the size, color & depth of a never-ending cup of coffee with cream and sugar, immediately took to me.
Lol, I'll never forget her exclaiming 'You gotta bug on you! I get it!' and fervantly pinching & pulling at a sticking-out kinda mole I had on my neck area. (This ultimately led to the removal of this mole, but that's another story;) She was helping me, protecting me.
But having an ever greater impact upon me & countless others with whom I have shared this with were the words of wisdom that flew from her mouth one sunny afternoo
n.
I had her in my arms and her legs straddled my waist. I would bend over, throwing her backwards & upside down, with my arms crisscrossed over her upper back and shoulder blades as to avoid disturbing her AZT pack wrapped around her mid-section and then I would scoop her back up again. Each time we would squeal......'Weeeeeeee,' 'Whoooooaaaa,' 'Ewwwwww' with great delight at our two-person make-do roller-coaster ride.
Finally she says 'OK, Stop!' and I did... fearful that I had made her dizzy or woozie or what-have you. She then smiled , cocked her curly head to the side & said 'Now, throw m
e up waaaaay high'
I lifted her up quickly and brought her back down, never allowing her to slip my grasp. Her brows crossed & she quickly barked 'No! Throw Me!'
I laughed, 'Baby, I can't just throw you...what if I don't catch you? I worry that you could get seriously hurt...'
As I rambled on about what we could do & couldn't do & such, she took her two fat little little hands and smooshed my face between them... as in a polite, gentle gesture to shut me up.
'You silly adults...don't you guys know anything? Life should be fun!'
Cupid's
lips pucked up & jutted out in a toddlers' pout.
Smooshy-faced, I smiled back at her.
'Throoooow meeeeee. It'll beeeeee-a-eeeee ok! Life should be fun, you know?'
So, I did.
I threw her higher & higher.
Over & over again.
... and it was fun.
May we all learn from the mouth of babes.
09-11... no TV, no newspapers, no radio...natural for me & wisely suggested by the infinitely wise, She.
The telephone r
ings, but only collectors are calling... no new news there.
It's a day to reflect.
I hung no new flags, tied no more yellow ribbons & won't drive by day with my lights on.
Not because I don't care or am not unawar
e.
I have flags hanging, some dating back 20 years.
My yellow ribbons get dirty and frayed from the weather and ultimately they come down...and that always makes me sad. So my solution has been to not put the
m around the big old oak trees anymore.
My headlights won't shut off on their own & I will surely end up with a dead battery, should I turn them on by daylight.
Someone once ribbed me for saying I was proud to be an American, as I became American simply by being born here. True. I guess I ought not be proud to have my family either, but I am. I am more than proud...I am grateful & relieved.
Welcome to be little corner of the world.
Walking down my street, up my walkway, past my mailbox & onto my porch, sit for a spell & then venture into my living room, my kitchen, my den, my office you will see little reminders of me, my friends, my family
& my country.
May we never forget.
May the circle go unbroken.
May we nurture the good & let love grow.
May we remain thankful, grateful, aware & appreciative.
May we continue to live, love & learn.
May open hearts, open minds & open communications clear the way for peace... at home, at work, at school & globally.
rap-a-tap-tap-tap at the door...
Ruff! Ruff! Ruff! Grrrrr....
With skin still embossed from the thread-bare sheet, I stumbled through the artillery of dogs to the door.
'Would you like to buy some magazines for my school?'
'Yeah baby, when do you have to turn this stuff in?'
'Next Thursday'
'Great...can you come back on Tuesday? I get paid on Wednesday & can give you a check.'
'Momma?'
'Yes, honey...we can come back. how are you Skinny?'
'Good, neighbor-lady...How are you?'
'Collectors are calling...you know. My husband saw your husband this morning & he was on his way to the river... you didn't go?'
'Ummmm, no. We divorced last month.'
'Oh, I am sorry. I will pray for you.'
'That's alright honey. Save your prayers for those who really need them. I'm all good.'
'I need to c
ome over more often & talk to you. You have just been talking to the wrong person.'
'What are you talking about?'
'You should have been talking to God!'
'Well neighbor-lady, I don't know who you think I have been talking to...'
'You should talk more with God Skinny'
'I talk to anyone & everyone. In my opinion life is for living, learning & loving...and if you're not doing all 3, then you aren't doing any of them effectively. I've made my choices & I have made mistakes. I'm living, learning & loving. it's all good.'
'But God can cure all. He can work miracles.'
''Getting married was my choice & so was getting divorced. I am not going to pray about that ...I'm living, learning & loving.'
'You should write that down somewhere...'
Am I naive? Can't this 'person' I 'need to talk to' called God be part of me? Can't I skip the whole calling him God thing? Can't what she calls God, I call my heart & soul? Can't reflection on my end be the same as a prayer on hers? Can't my friends & family be consider
ed a community of the church? Can't my choices made, lessons learned, loves shared & life lived be considered a miracle?
I didn't say any of these things to her for three basic reasons.
One~ It's not my place to push my beliefs onto anyone else
Two~Nor did I feel like I needed to validate myself any further.
Three~ I'm just glad she believes. I believe, maybe differently than her, but I believe & I know it's all good.
Hmmm, Living, learning & loving... sounds so satanic, evil & corrupt, doesn't it?
Do You believe in soul-mates?
Yup.
Have you ever had one?
Yup.
So, tell me about your soul-mate.
Which one?
On some levels...Smokie, Marbeline, Vilulah, Harley & Crunch are even my soul-mates.
The Devil went down to Georgia
and he was looking for a soul to steal
He was in a bind
'Cause he was way behind
And he was willin' to make a deal...
The school cafeteria is bustling in the early hours of the morning.
And if you care to take a dare, I'll make a bet with you.
Everyone has their job to do and some folks just walk around carrying a sheet of paper while others are shuffling mass quantities of this & that here and there preparing for the daily influx of 100's of hungry kids.
I take your bet, you're gonna regret cause I the best there's ever been.
The government dictates the borders of what will be fed & the lunch ladies have to stay within those borders to provide a proper diet for the children. And should a child not have lunch money for so many days...cheese sandwich
Just sit right in that chair right there
And let me show you how it's done
Some folks laughed & others' stared in disgust, but she broke loose and she shook her fanny & twisted her hips, stomped her feet & clapped her hands. Charlie Daniels squeaked out on the little radio & for the moment, the cafeteria floor became Georgia clay & the paper holder became a chicken running from the Devil & one little lunch lady became Johnny.
Johnny said, Devil just come on back
If you ever wanna try again
I done told you once you son of a bitch
I'm the best there's ever been
And he played Fire on the Mountain
Run boys, run
The devil's in the House of the Rising Sun
Chicken in a bread pan picken' out dough
Granny does your dog bite
No child, no
Later in the day, she smuggled a cookie into the pocket of the man whose real name is Johnny & she bit her tongue while a young, boy new to the school, was told he could only have a cheese sandwich. As his eyes swelled with tears, she started shoveling food...green beans, corn, pizza all onto an unrung plate. The paper-holder paced with her paper, chicken lips flapping about rules & regulations. And the cafeteria lady with a fiddle made of gold took that cheese sandwich & those teary eyes & replaced them with hugs, love & a plate full of green beans, pizza & trust.
Granny does your dog bite
No child, no
~ Charlie Daniels Band
Sometimes it's about quality, not quantity. 1000 cheese sandwiches could never compete with that scoop of green beans, that slice of pizza.
When
I was a kid at the beach, I liked to lay with my head in the still moist, shimmering like diamond dust sand, one ear again
st the ground with my feet in the lapping, sometimes yellow & sometimes green sea foam.
Laying there, I felt like I could hear the heartbeat of the ocean.I felt free to do nothing, but soak it all in.
I 'd see how long I could just lay there before the sea foam starting tickling the side of my face & threatened to splash my eyes with salt water. Sometimes I'd just close my down-side eye 
and allow Mother Nature to tickle me with ribbons of water, other times I would scooch with the changing tide.
Laying there, I would let my imagination run wild.
I would daydream about desolate beaches...
about the Florida beaches before white man came...
about beaches where horses ran free...
about glass houses underneath the water...
about Atlantis in the Atlantic out my backdoor...
about being small enough to ride a seahorse...
about Chicken of the Sea labels...
about being saved from tragedy by a great octopus...
about Great Whites giving me water park rides...
about mermaids and about being a mermaid...
about what type of seashell I would want to live in if I was a little mermaid.
I always thought conchs would be better than the typical clam shells. Granted clam shells can close tight & one could sleep soundl
y & safely there. But the interior swell of the conch would provide natural pillow and the exterior would be like a form fitted blanket. Besides with my feet tucked deep within the conch, I could stay closer to all the action, ready to climb on out ...kinda like sleeping with the door opened.
Even in my sleep, I never wanted to miss a beat.
38 years ago, this week, in '69 as Hurricane Camille began her voyage straight towards home, my younger brother was born. Dad was out of town on business. My mothers' sister came to sit with the four of us as Momma was raced to the hospital. Chanty boy was born with Downs' Syndrome, among other things and Mother was told she may as well go home & evacuate her remaining children as he would never make it through the night. She had to have courage & she did. He, at a few hours of age, had to have courage & he did. And we all got lucky.
Chanty Boy made it through the night, through the week, through his teens and all the way to his 38th birthday. The man, who will always be Chanty-Boy to me, has courage.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHANTY BOY! WE ARE SO VERY LUCKY TO HAVE YOU!
Some of you are aware that my beautiful, sweet, soulful sister Kimbies was diagnosed with Her2+ Breast Cancer last year. She, too, has had courage... the deep, powerful, loving kind of courage that you never even know exists until the time has come for it to reveal itself. I sit back and I look at her with an awe and an amazement that words could never wrap around, yet I find her love, her courage, her strength, her passion wrapping all around me... and it wraps around everyone she comes in contact with. Talk to her once & it'll wrap around you too.
At one point in time, not so long ago, I thought I would never even get a mammogram. I thought I would just live until I died...which I know is ultimately what I'd be doing no matter what. I thought 'there are some things I just don't wanna know...'
Several weeks before I filed for divorce, I had my first mammogram. A couple weeks after I filed, it came back 'suspicious.' So I went back for a 'magni-mammo.' It, too, came back suspicious & they sent me to a surgeon.The mammogram picked up things that no self-exam ever could. The surgeon said my bi-rad score was a four & that I had a high density (and to think I thought firm breasts were good ;) He said that they would probably remove all suspicious areas while pulling for the biopsy.
I was scared, facing divorce & possibly cancer.
But, I thought about my Mother, my brothers, my sisters, Mel, Vicci, She with Courage, the
Dog Whisperer , Kharma & so many other others and all the COURAGE they have had. I thought about all the other times in my life I had to have courage. I thought about how TODAY we were all so LUCKY to have each other, like many other days gone by & days yet to come.
So I pulled out my peaceful Lucky shirt sent ever so generously & thoughtfully by COURAGE & plopped it over my bony head, my bony shoulders & my grateful heart. I went in for for my stereotactic procedure & the results, which I know will be good, should be here by next week-end. Sometimes we just gotta have COURAGE in order to get lucky!
Ladies & Gentlemen...please get your mammograms done. Educate yourselves. Have Courage & Maybe We will All Get Lucky!
Recently, someone came to me to apologize that she had called me a hippie.
'That's cool, I don't care what you call me. I mean it could be worse.'
She said that she wanted me to know that she said that because she thought I had a peaceful & understanding attitude that allowed me to understand & accept a variety of people, situations, circumstances & such without looking at the superficial influences of society. I laughed and said 'Well, thank you...I'm glad to know that it didn't mean that you thought I was eating psychedelic mushrooms & celebrating free love....even though I will gladly hug anyone' I came home & pulled out my Random House dictionary, copyrighted 1970. It does not even have the word 'Hippie' in it. So I looked the word up on Dictionary.com and here is what I found...
The terms hipster and hippie derive from the word 'hip.' The term hipster was coined by Harry Gibson in the 1940's to describe jazz performers. One of the first recorded usages of the word hippie was in a radio show in 1945, in which Harry the Hipster aka Harry Gibson, was called a "Hippie".
Years later, in his 1964 autobiography, Malcolm X referred to the word hippy as a term that African Americans used to describe a white person who "acted more Negro than Negroes."
The more contemporary sense of the word hippie first appeared in print on September 5, 1965 in the article "A New Haven for Beatniks" In that article, Fallon wrote about the Blue Unicorn coffeehouse, using the term hippie to refer to the new generation of beatniks who had moved from
Use of the term hippie did not catch on in the masses until 1967, after San Francisco columnists Herb Caen began referring to hippies in his daily columns.
The foun
dation of the hippie movement finds historical precedent as far back as the counterculture of the Ancient Greeks, espoused by philosophers like Diogenes of Sinope, Socrates & the Cynics, ... who believed in a a life of poverty, self-sufficiency & the suppression of desires. Other influences upon hippies include the ideas of Jesus Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi and more.
In fin de siècle Europe (1890-1914), a back-to-nature movement began. Thousands of young Germans rejected the rapid trend toward urbanization and attempted to return to the natural, pagan, and spiritual life of their ancestors.
In the first several decades of the twentieth century, these beliefs were introduced to the United States as Germans immigrated in & settled into California's warm climate which allowed for alternative lifestyles & saw the opening of the first health food stores. Their beleifs and practices were quickly adopted by other young Americans.
Eden Ahbez wrote a hit song called Nature Boy, which was recorded in 1947 by Nat King Cole, popularizing the homegrown back-to-nature movement in California to mainstream America. Since then, this song has been featured in countless movies, including Moulin Rouge. The gist of this song is that the greatest thing in life is 'to love and to be loved.' Twenty years later, a few of these 'Nature Boys,' including the famous Gypsy Boots, (who is accredited for mainstreaming alternative fitness lifestyles such as yoga & organic foods) made their way to Northern California in 1967, just in time for the Summer of Love in San Francisco.
Another influence were members of the Jamaican Rastafari movement who wore long hair (called dreadlocks), smoked pot as a sacrament, rejected the
establishment and espoused a back-to-nature and back-to-their-Aftrican-roots philosophy. The 1950's saw a large immigration of Jamaicans into the UK, influencing the developing UK hippie movement, with contacts often formed when young whites would buy cannabis from black communities.
The Beatniks of the 1950's found themselves often being referred to as 'Hippies' in the 1960's although there were technically some differences between these two counter sub-cultures. Beatniks were known for their goatees, their poetry & their dismal clothing. While not known for being particularly political, the term 'Beatnik' became very commercialized in the early 1960's. 'Hippies' were known for their long hair, their bright clothing & their activity in anti-war movements & this term became more commercialized years later...
With the introduction & popularization of LSD (see Timothy Leary ) & the new folk psychedelic rock-n-roll (see the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane , Jimi Hendrix & Buffalo Springfield, among others) of the 1960's, many young people dropped out of college & began to live communally, cent
ering their life around art, music & personal expression. In fact, by 1966 about 15,000 youth had moved into the Haight & they found their world centered around a group called the Diggers, an artistic theater group who wanted to create a free city...often providing impromptu artistic venues, including drama, music & traditional artwork, as well as free food, transportation, medical supplies & even temporary housing. Woodstock, The Summer of Love, Monterey Music Festival & Altamont led many Hippies to travel together in their 'art' vehicles and/or to hitchhiking, which was considered environmentally friendly as well as economical. These events, especially the Summer of Love, led more & more hippies to pacified political protests 
& marches against war & for civil rights (even though Altamont did show violence could happen even with Hippies) 
s have been influenced by & have influenced religious perspectives, health & fitness attitudes, political agendas, social & personal lifestyle choices, artistic expressions, mass media, commercial ventures & fashion styles....among other things.
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