What have we come to.....

As a nation of immigrants (all of us, even the Native Americans) came here from another continent.None of us can claim to be a true American.  What we can do is learn to tolerate and even perhaps, learn to appreciate others who are different....either by religion, ethnicity, sexual preference, sex, ....It is not required that we form close friendships with everyone we meet.  However, we do need to be open to new people, foods, thoughts, ideas, music, art.....

I realize I am rambling.  I simply don't understand the hate that has erupted in this country.  Was it always here, but more closely concealed?
If we wish to claim that we are a Christian Nation, first we have to follow the teachings of Christ.  If you don't know what he says about feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless and loving thy neighbor....look it up.

I believe the Founding Fathers did the right thing when they added the amendment separating church and state.
Our churches should stay out of politics.  And our politicians should be faithful to the teachings of their religions.

The rest of us, those who are not religious, should just do the right things.

My children will....

As my Mother in Law  aged, I began to go through her refrigerator and pantry checking for past the use by date foods.  Her eyesight was very bad by this time and I asked her permission first.  She thought it was a good idea and was very embarrassed at the number of things she had that were no longer safe to eat.  Each time we visited I did this.  I also found some things that amused me...she had, for example, 3 boxes for string....labeled "long:, "medium" and "too short to save."  She also had a collection of Hunt's tomato sauce cans, empty, clean and stacked and a big box of vinyl gloves, with  the index finger cut off of almost half of them.  I never figured this out, but I found it interesting and laughed about it with my husband.  My Mom lived by herself until she was 100 years old.  I routinely went through her fridge and pantry weeding out things.   She tended to save left overs ( or meals I had taken her)  a long time.  Some were almost unrecognizeable.  Her main quirk was to put something away so that no one would steal it (I don''t know who she thought would do that) and then not be able to find it, thus convincing herself that someone had indeed stolen it.  I have spent hours looking for whatever it was with her, only to find it in some strange place (like a coat pocket) and then she would say..."Oh, yes, I remember putting that there now."

Now as I am getting older, I have started planning what my children will laugh about.  This morning I decided that probably one thing was our "obsession" with birds.  We are birders.  My husband keeps meticulous records of the birds we see each day.  We also feel birds.  We have special feeders for Goldfinches. Hummingbirds, Bullock's Orioles, Titmice and bird seed feeders for the usual sparrows, doves, Cardinals, Pyrrhuloxia  etc.  In the winter we put out a peanut butter feeder and the birds feast on it.  Usually we take it down in late March or early April when the Orioles come.  However this year the Male and female Ladder-Backed Woodpeckers and the Golden-Fronted Woodpecker have been coming  regularly several times a day.  So we just left it up.  And yes, we do have names for some of our birds....they are our "pets."   We also have "our" flock of Wild Turkeys....As I reread this, they might be right......

Weather alert

This afternoon I moved all the plants that I moved in last fall back outside.  All 17 of them.  What this means is that sometime in the next two or three weeks, (give or take) San Angelo and my neighborhood in particular will have a hard freeze, a hail storm, or a 50 mph windstorm.  Or maybe all three.  Maybe snow.  We have had snow in April before.  Of course, the mesquites have put on new leaves and the peach tree has finished blooming and has new leaves and even the pecan tree is "swelling."  The bluebonnets are beginning to bloom, the irises are in full bloom....and all of these can be fooled by the 86 + degree weather we have had.  I have tried waiting until mid-April to move them out, but that doesn't matter to the wind and hail storms...

It is Texas, if you don't like the weather, wait a minute and it will change.

Spring? No, winter..no what?

Well, the trees are leafing out...even the mesquite.  My flowers especially the irises, the miniature daffodils are beautiful and in full bloom.  The asparagus in the garden is shooting out of the ground.  The poppies and the larkspurs are growing rapidly.  The fruit trees have finished blossoming and have leafed out.  We have had our first Hummingbird.
We have had 91 degrees already.

  And tonight there is a freeze predicted.

Guess we will have to cover  the tomato plants, and the pepper plants...and the house plants I have put out will have to go back to the storeroom. This, my friends, is west Texas.  The most common comment about the weather is, "If you don't like it, wait and minute and it will change."

If there is a Heaven...

Many years ago, I graduated from UT Austin and almost immediately flew off to Tegucigalpa, Honduras to teach first grade in the American School there.  We, Rosie and I, were met at the airport by the Superintendent of schools and the Principal who took us on a brief tour of the town and the school and then told us that since there was a strike of some sort, there would be no school for the rest of the week.  They then took us to the Principal's home where we would stay until we found a place to live.  My parents heard about the strike that night on the evening news....they worried.  Rosie and I travelled over much of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.  It was a wonderful experience for me.

A year and a half later, I began teaching in Trier Germany for the Department of Defense schools.  Again I travelled...to England, France, Austria, USSR (this was in 1968), West Berlin, Romania, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Spain...well you get the picture.  I spent all my holidays and weekends travelling.
Finally settled in Austin and after a few years, married and moved to Huntsville TX and eventually had a son.  We call him our "save the world child."  He has taught ESL in Venezuela (the year Chavez took control), served in the Peace Corps in Jamaica, and now lives in DC.  He has a job with a non profit that requires lots of travel to other parts of the world.  And I worry sometime (well a lot) when he is in an unsettled area politically.
 Today he is flying into DC...I hope just ahead of the super storm they are about to have....the buses and all government offices closed down at noon and the metro will close at midnight.  I hope the flight manages to land safely and he can get from the Metro station to his house with his luggage, etc. safely....

I am sure my parents are sitting in heaven torn between worrying with me and wishing they could remind me that I am just "Paying for my raising."

Just what is America?

I watched a reporter interviewing people waiting for a Trump rally in Vermont....several of the Trump supporters said that something to the effect that they wanted their "rights" back.  I wanted the reporter to ask just what rights had been taken away and by whom....

Others mentioned that Trump would make America "great" again.  Just what America are we referring to...the one that intentionally spread smallpox among the Native Americans, maybe the one that condoned slavery, the one that denied women and blacks the right to vote, maybe the government that put thousands of Japanese and German citizens in "internment" camps during WWII, the one that supported dictators in Central and South America and Cuba, or more recently the one that invaded Iraq on false pretenses?

The USA has more military weapons and a military budget bigger than any other nation.  What is our focus.  Just think what we could have spent that money for.  Health Care, Education, child welfare, infrastructure, etc.....