Elections

I hope I'm not the only one in Texas and other states that are voting for new governors, Congressmen and State Representatives that believes campaign speeches are getting progressively into 'dirty fighting'. I cannot believe some of the things that these people are saying about one another and the worse it gets the more people will vote for them.

I watched "Bill Maher" this past weekend and the guests that were on believe that the one who is the nastiest appear to be the strongest and therefore more people will vote for them. That is probably true for the people who don't do 'due diligence' about their candidates. But it seems they must notice that things aren't right with their present adminstration, or is it a fact that the evil one knows about is better than the one they don't know about?

Here in Texas our present governor has done nothing for the people of Texas during his four year term and now that it's election time, he's suddenly doing everything that everyone complained that he wasn't doing for four years. He's admitted that he would just wait because more people pay attention during the election year. He has implemented plans to do all the things he should have done before. WTF? Is this fair? What the 'dirty politics' does do is bring to the forefront the faults and self-serving incumbent's past performances. This incumbent has more money to spend by far than the other candidates because of his favors to big business and his buddies. He has a large war chest thanks to them.

Kinky Friedman has a grassroots following, has had more single contribution although small than any of the other cancidates and he's not a politician. He genuinely cares about the people of Texas, it's children and it's teachers.

This is actually the very first time in my life that I have contributed to person's political campaign because I believe he is not self-serving. He is running as an independent. The present Governor has implemented a plan to split up the voting districts so that certain areas cannot win against him and his Republican party. This proposal went to Congress for the vote (naturally it's overwhelmed by Republicans) and this proposal passed into law. He has privately made deals with independent contractors to sell them State Park Land, has contracted with a foreign insurance company which is run by his former state employees for health insurance. Now there are 100,000 children in Texas without health insurance. But you know, he's a good looking guy and has charisma so what's not to like, huh? (I'm being sarcastic here.)

Well I voted early this year just to make sure I got my vote in. We have 6 days left until election day. I wish this blog could become public, I want to get all those people who don't usually vote at all to get out there and vote for Kinky Friedman.

What a Difference a Day Makes ( actually 18,250 days)

  

I went to my 50th high school class reunion and realized that the 18,250 days since have passed like they are yesterday. It was wonderful to see old friends and guess who they were before you looked at the picture and name pinned on their chest.

The days were so important to us then, most days going by slowly until the night of the Prom, or the night of Homecoming or summer vacation. I wish time would go as slowly now. I don't know if seniors in high school have a section in their year book about superlatives or not but we did. We had the Class Clowns, the Most Dramatic, Class Politicians, Most Popular, Most Optimistic, Best dressed and so on. The only one I managed to get was Best Looking along with Martin.

Above is the picture of us together that was in the yearbook. Below as we are 18,250 days later.

A Killer Strikes Again

  

Yesterday was a busy day here, I had plenty of errands to run and finally got home about 4:00 pm expecting to take some aspirin and lie down to get rid of the headache I'd developed.

I had let Tinker out as soon as I returned and when I went to let her back in she didn't come to my call. I whistled and called and she still didn't come. I heard a sharp barking noise, the high rasping hysterical kind, so I changed clothes, put on comfortable shoes with a tread and went down the hill.

There she was digging a huge hole near the drainage ditch. She was crouched down frantically digging under the fence. We've had bobcats in the neighborhood and I was afraid that she was just trying to get out under the fence after it. That wasn't the case. An armadillo was plastered flat against a rock with it's stomach facing the rock and clinging for dear life. It had seen Tinker and run and burrowed under a rock only to find another rock on the other side; deadend for sure.

She suddenly came trotting out into the yard with the armadillo in her mouth, shaking it and crunching at the same time. Horrible sound that. She has huge back teeth and if she can get something that far back in her mouth it's a goner. Possums are dispatched with one crunch around the shoulders so they can't run. This armadillo had been crushed pretty flat but was still moving. Tinker would let it drop and if it tried to run she grabbed it and shook it some more and crunched some more.

I was in a panic trying to get it away from her but she was determined to keep it. Everytime I came near should would pick it up and take off. Finally my thinking cleared a little and I got the hose and sprayed her with it and she dropped the armadillo and ran up the hill.

With it firmly nestled in my shovel I hurled it over the back fence and then went to catch Tinker. I had called a friend who came over to help me get the dirt, blood and gore off of her with dog shampoo and she finally settled down.

Normally she is the sweetest dog, very affectionate and very smart but let a critter into the yard and she becomes a hunting dog - a killer! I'm hoping this little foray satisfied her bloodlust for a least a week. She knew this armadillo was out there, she could smell it through the walls of the house and looked for it every night. Luckily it was stupid enough to come out in the daytime or else I'd be shoveling at 2:00 in the morning like last time.

Long Ago and Far Away

I'm reading another book about Mary Magdalene, one of several I've read lately that are similar to the DaVinci Code. That book has been so contraversial but I can't help wondering if parts of it could be true.

I've taken a lot of flak from family and friends about my interest in other possibilities, like the idea that Christ didn't die on the cross, but was aided by Pontius Pilate and some apostles in faking his death, rescued from the tomb and continued his married life with Mary Magdalene, had children and lived for a long time. We do know that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute, this idea was refuted by the Catholic Churce in 1960. They admitted that this was a lie, a story made up by certain Pope's to discredit women in the early life of the Christian church.

Everything else is just a guess. I've read extensively about the lifestyle of the Jews at the time of Christ, their religious beliefs and their moral standards. I don't believe they would have allowed a grown man to teach children unless he was a married man. A boy was not considered 'born' into his family and religious group until he had his Bar Mitsvah at the age of 13, so if he spent 12 years studying in the Temple, he would have been 24 at the time he spoke to the money lenders in the Temple not a boy of 12. It seems that many other customs would have been followed as well.

There was a time period after a man and woman were betrothed before they would actually have the marriage ceremony. No matter what they did before the actual ceremony a woman was considered a virgin until the actual ceremony. Could it be possible that Mary and Joseph had sex during this time and she became pregnant and at the time of her marriage she would have still be considered a virgin, hence, the virgin birth?

Does anyone else think about these things? Is this considered blasphemy just thinking about this?

I was brought up in the Catholic Church and partook of all the sacraments but I don't know if I actually believed any of the things they taught. I knew I felt good going to church and as years went by I didn't attend church anymore. It wasn't until I read a book about the Holy Grail that I started to think about the possibility that Christ was an ordinary man who had a family but wanted to preach goodness and peace among men in his lifetime and that Mary was his wife and the mother of his children. He never intended to found a new religion but worshipped God as his spiritual father, not his biological father.

I've started a new book called "The Expected One" by Kathleen McGowan. It's a novel and takes place in modern day times, is not as intriguing as the Da Vinci Code and others so I'll only know if it inspires in me more heavy thinking after I finish it. I do want to still read the Thomas Gospels and the Gnostic Gospels although I may get more feedback from my family than I want unless I keep my ideas to myself.

I do still consider myself a Christian but I'm trying to figure out why beyond pure faith. I'm the kind of person that wants to see something for myself or have someone prove it to me before I believe. Is this a bad thing? I know I'll still have my own opinions whether I express them or not.

Reunion!

I am going to my high school class reunion. I've made plane reservations, rented a car and made hotel reservations and all I have to do is lose 30 lbs. in 3 weeks! That is if I want to show up like the last reunion which I went to as a size 6!

I don't think it's going to be possible given that I waited until the last minute to make the decision to go. Now I have to get around the fact that all the other people won't seem as old to me. I'll be one of them, one of the old people. It will be fifty (50) in case you didn't read that correctly, years since I graduated from high school. I felt like 10 years ago I was young, I didn't recognize anyone. Who were these people? I thought I went to the wrong event! This year I'm going to fit right in unless I starve myself for the next 3 weeks and maybe lose a couple of pounds. Or maybe I'll be the only one who has gained weight and people won't know who I am. I'll definitely need that label they give you to stick on your dress.

I grew up in a small town in Connecticut, lived almost across the street from the grammar school and went to the same school through 6th grade. Almost everyone that I started kindergarten with went through all the grades with me, right up until high school. There were 2 grammar schools, one was Broad Street School where I went and Linden Street School across town. In Junior High School we all gathered together in 7th grade and went on through high school together.

This photo is my 4th grade class with Mrs. Smith. I was madly in love with the boy in the second row on the left as were all the other girls. The girl in the top row second from left had the inside track all through grammar school.

  

I think some of these people will be at the reunion. I've been emailing the girl sitting on my right, Beverly, and it seems amazing to me that we can email like it hasn't been 30 years or more since we've communicated with each other.

The picture below is my 3rd grade class with Miss Tomasso. Most of the same kids but the girl in the 2nd row on the left side was my best friend and I noticed this is the last photo of her in my class. She lived on my street and her name was Audrey. She moved away after 3rd grade but we were friends from kindergarten till then. I remember a time when I was at her house playing and we went inside and her mother was running around in the kitchen with water collecting at an alarming rate all over the floor. The flood was coming from the bathroom just off the kitchen and the toilet had stopped up and she was running around looking for a plunger. It frightened me so much that after I went home I was afraid to flush the toilet for about a year. Audrey moved to Maine and after that I played with the boys on the street, playing baseball, riding bikes, playing cowboys and Indians, marbles and after dark playing hide and seek.

  

You probably won't recognize me, I hardly recognize myself. In the first picture I'm the 3rd from the right in the 2nd row. In the second picture I'm 4th from the right in the first row. I hope you noticed that the boy I had a crush on is standing next to his 'girlfriend' in the 3rd grade picture. That 'relationship' lasted until 7th grade or 8th grade when I got lucky and he let me wear his watch for two weeks until someone else started wearing it and I was heartbroken. I wonder if this guy is still a ladykiller!

Yesterday

I had a wonderful day yesterday going over old family pictures with my daughter Kathy. I want to scan all of the old pictures even though we don't know a lot of the people.

My mothers side of the family came from Waterbury, CT. At that time Waterbury was a very large thriving city with lots of different manufacturing companies one of which was Scovill Mfg. They made brass buttons and metal snaps and such. I think they still make metal snaps for western wear.

My mother was born in 1901 in Waterbury, CT. Here is a picture of her at around six months.



This family group was inseparable at least for picture taking. On the left is my great grandmother Mary Bates Thackeray Dunworth and clockwise is her younger daughter Bessie M. Thackeray Wheeler, her older daughter (my grandmother) Mae Thackeray Beckerhouse and in the middle my mother Anna Mae Beckerhouse around the age of three. My great grandmother was married first to a Harry Thackeray and we have traced him to Ohio sometime after 1892 but Mary stayed in Waterbury. We think he relocated and they were divorced although we haven't found that evidence. She later married Ezra Dunworth and thereafter became known as Grandma Dunworth to my mother.

  

My grandmother and grandfather were still married at this time when my mother went to have her picture taken at a photo studio in a 'balloon basket'. She was about eight years old in this picture. The original is an old tin type.

  

I think a lot happened in the household during the years between the eight year old picture and this one taken in 1920 when my mother was 19 years old. The Thackerays were divorced in a particularly ugly divorce, my grandmother claiming physical and mental abuse and my grandfather claiming adultery. My mother lived with Grandma Dunworth for several years during the upheaval and she always hated it. They lived upstairs over a tavern that my great grandmother and her second husband (the Dunworths) ran in Waterbury. She saw a lot of sights that made her a teetotaler all her life.

  


She met my father a year later and they were married in 1923.

  

Of course there is more to the story...both before and after!

I've Gotta Tell You Something, Mom

  

The year was 1988 a few days after the 4th of July when my son came home and said, "I've gotta tell you something, Mom". My heart sank but I sat and listened to the son who never did anything wrong. He had always watched and listened to what everyone else was doing and managed to keep himself out of the doghouse by just getting out of the way. He'd gotten good marks all through school and never caused a problem. "I think I burned a house down" was his next statement.

He and his friend John had found some fireworks that were left over from the July 4th celebration and decided to set them off in John's backyard. After the bottle rockets blew they couldn't find the remnants so they left to do something else. When they got back fire engines and police cars were lined up in front of John's next door neighbor's house. They readily told the police that they had set off bottle rockets and didn't know where they had gone.

The next day the paper announced that two boys (unnamed) had set off fireworks and that they were responsible for the burning of the house. I called John's Mom in a panic and she said not to worry about it right then it would take a while for the investigation. Eleven or twelve firemen had been taken to the hospital with toxic smoke poisoning and the investigators were going to find out why.

About two months later Dave was called to a lawyer's office to give a deposition and he told the attorneys for the insurance companies they had set off fireworks and hadn't found where they had landed and they didn't know if they had caused a fire or not.

We never heard anything more about it directly but the paper published a story about the house and a lawsuit the firemen had started against the insurance companies.

It wasn't until a few years later that we heard the house had faulty wiring and some weird kind of insulation in the attic and that the investigators thought the fire had been caused when the wiring had sparked and started a fire that eventually ignited the wood shingled roof and then the house before anyone saw the flames.

Does this look like a "firestarter"? His sweet innocent face looked the same at three years old as it did in high school in 1988 and still does to this day.