My father served in World War II; my husband served in the Navy; one brother served in the Army in Germany and one brother retired from the Army.  On this day let  us reflect on the sacrifice that our service men and women made and are still making for our freedom.  I am most deeply disturbed about how we treat our veterans and especially disabled veterans as well as widows and widowers of the Valiants who gave their lives for our freedom or came back with severe disabilities which most bear courageously with no self pity.  Look at the following video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbV3lf1HzQI&feature=player_detailpage

"…It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.." –Samuel Adams

Oh my, I can remember all of these so well especially the stupid S & H stamps and the ice cube tray!

 

Your entire childhood in one email….   45 rpm spindles                      Green Stamps                             Metal Ice cube trays     Beany and Cecil                       Roller-skate keys                              Cork pop guns     Marlin Perkins                   Drive in  Movies                              Drive  in restaurants             Car Hops                              Studebakers                                 Topo Gigio     Washtub wringers           The Fuller Brush Man        Sky King                     Reel-To-Reel tape recorders     Tinkertoys                           Erector Sets Lincoln Logs   15 cent hamburgers                    5 cent packs of baseball cards                          Penny candy   25 cent a gallon gasoline                                     Jiffy Pop popcorn               5 cent stamps    Gum wrapper chains Chatty Cathy dolls 5 cent Cokes          Speedy Alka-Seltzer Cigarettes for Christmas           Falstaff Beer    Burma Shave signs              Brownie camera                                       Flash bulbs       TV Test patterns Old Yeller Chef Boy-AR-dee          Fire escape tubes                         Timmy and Lassie Ding Dong Avon calling       Brylcreem  Aluminum Christmas Trees If you can remember most or all of these, then you’ve been around a while.  Pass this on to anyone who may need a break from their ‘grown-up’ life.

INTERESTING OBSERVATION 1. The sport of choice for the urban poor is  BASKETBALL. 2 The sport of choice for maintenance level employees is  BOWLING. 3 The sport of choice for front-line workers is  FOOTBALL. 4 The sport of choice for supervisors is  BASEBALL. 5 The sport of choice for middle management is TENNIS. And…. 6 The sport of choice for corporate executives and officers is  GOLF. THE AMAZING CONCLUSION: The higher you go in the corporate structure, the smaller your balls become. There must be a ton of people in Washington playing marbles!

I have many things for which to be grateful.  I try daily to list my gratitudes to God  and there are many.  Now that I have had a pacemaker installed to raise my heart rate from 40-50 which it has been running for several years, I am finally getting out of mind numbing and overwhelming fatigue not helped by my grief of losing my Al almost a year ago now.  I have several blog items in the works and am even looking at Facebook again!  I also want to share the latest photosof my Rattlebridge Cyber Dawn; I am really grateful to have this young, beautiful, and totally adorable boy in my life and usually fighting for space on my lap. 

             Rattlebridge Cyber Dawn

Thought the following was important enough to share:  M.

WHAT HAPPENS IN HEAVEN WHEN WE PRAY?

I dreamt that I went to Heaven and an angel was showing me around. We walked side-by-side inside a large workroom filled with angels. My angel guide stopped in front of the first section and said, ‘ This is the Receiving Section. Here, all petitions to God said in prayer are received. I looked around in this area, and it was terribly busy with so many angels sorting out petitions written on voluminous paper sheets and scraps from people all over the world.

Then we moved on down a long corridor until we reached the second section.
The angel then said to me, "This is the Packaging and Delivery Section.. Here, the graces and blessings the people asked for are processed and delivered to the living persons who asked for them." I noticed again how busy it was there There were many angels working hard at that station, since so many blessings had been requested and were being packaged for delivery to Earth.

Finally at the farthest end of the long corridor we stopped at the door of a very small station. To my great surprise, only one angel was seated there, idly doing nothing. "This is the Acknowledgment Section, my angel friend quietly admitted to me. He seemed embarrassed." How is it that there is no work going on here? ‘ I asked.
"So sad," the angel sighed. "After people receive the blessings that they asked for, very few send back acknowledgments"
"How does one acknowledge God’s blessings? " I asked.  "Simple," the angel answered. Just say, "Thank you, Lord. "

"What blessings should they acknowledge?" I asked.

"If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep you are richer than 75% of this world. If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish, you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy. "
"And if you get this on your own computer, you are part of the 1% in the world who has that opportunity."
"If you woke up this morning with more health than illness … You are more blessed than the many who will not even survive this day. "
"If you have never experienced the fear in battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation … You are ahead of 700 million people in the world."
"If you can attend a church without the fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death you are envied by, and more blessed than, three billion people in the world."
"If your parents are still alive and still married …you are very rare."
"If you can hold your head up and smile, you are not the norm, you’re unique to all those in doubt and despair……"
Ok, what now? How can I start?
If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing in that someone was thinking of you as very special and you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world who cannot read at all. Have a good day, count your blessings , and if you care to, pass this along to remind everyone else how blessed we all are

I was asked to keep this going – and will gladly do so WHEN A SOLDIER COMES HOME This email is being circulated around the world – please keep it going When a soldier comes home, he finds it hard…. ..to listen to his son whine about being bored.   ….to keep a straight face when people complain about potholes.            to be tolerant of people who complain about the hassle of getting ready for work.   …to be understanding when a co-worker complains about a bad night’s sleep.   ..to be silent when people pray to God for a new car.   ….to control his panic when his wife tells him he needs to drive slower.   ..to be compassionate when a businessman expresses a fear of flying.   ….to keep from laughing when anxious parents say they’re afraid to   send their kids off to summer camp.    ….to keep from ridiculing someone who complains about hot weather.     ….to control his frustration when a colleague gripes about his coffee being cold.   ….to remain calm when his daughter complains about having to walk the dog.   …..to be civil to people who complain about their jobs.     …..to just walk away when someone says they only get two weeks of vacation a year.     ….to be forgiving when someone says how hard it is to have a new baby in the house. The only thing harder than being a Soldier… Is loving one.     I was asked to pass this on and I will gladly do so, Will you???

I know that I have not blogged in a very long time, but I have just not had the energy.  Losing one’s mate and the ensuing grief has been almost paralyzing for me.  I have also decided whatever depression I am experiencing is really exacerbated by the gloomy and almost always cloudy, snowing, or lately raining yucky and depressing Ohio weather. I have never been a sun worshiper, but now I feel so much better when there is any sun to worship.  My aches go away and my mood lifts when the temperature goes up, the rain ceases, and the sun comes out.   I am moving forward in my life and am blessed with wonderful friends, my faith, and a beautiful home and lovely Cavaliers.  I will leave catching up on my personal life until another blog, but right now just want to “bitch” about the state of affairs in our country. Let’s start with outsourcing:

When my old Dell Laptop started to begin signs of aging after six years of loyalty, I purchased a new Dell 17 inch laptop failing to remember that while the computer performed admirably with only a few beginning glitches, Dell tech support did not perform admirably.  I shuddered when I remembered the long, late nights of trying to get my computer set up without glitches that defied description at least by me.  Do you remember the line that Peter Finch yelled from the window in the movie Network?  “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”  In my latest dealings with Dell outsourced technical support I found myself screaming the same line and refraining from screaming American obscenities into the ears of the tech support with varying degrees of English competence and/or intricacies of dialect or computer jargon as I can understand it. I am mad as hell to begin with with Americans in this country continuing to lose jobs to outsourcing.  It is certainly not the fault of the countries or personnel where American companies set up shop; it is the fault of our greedy profit driven at any expense companies who want cheap labor.

Why do companies outsource tech support to non Americans located in foreign lands when I barely know how to describe the problem to myself much less an outsourced “techie”.  When one does not know how to speak “Computer tech” much less explain the problem with a computer, how does one deal with a technical support person in another country..  I am afraid I fit the bill sometimes of the Ugly American when speaking with the fifth or sixth person in two different countries trying to get help.  The phone line goes dead, one must explain the problem to seven different people with no results, one’s ownership of said problematic computer is questioned when there is no record of the computer even when the receipt is in hand. Then the line goes dead.  Finally after five hours on the phone to Dell tech support located heaven knows where and four move hours the next day,  someone who knows what he is doing gets on the phone and the problem is solved in fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, I have become a babbling idiot with a bad headache, frayed nerves, lack of goodwill toward men and especially Dell. 

On another note, Exxon just posted profits last quarter of 10.2 billion.  If you did not get that here it is $10,200,000,000.  If I am wrong in the vast number of 0’s please forgive me as my head swims just visualizing that much money. Now gas has just gone up today again to $4.15 a gallon and going higher. Thank God and I mean thank God that I am blessed enough to pay for gas as long as I stay in our county! However,  I am appalled,angry, and horrified that those of us who are unemployed, making minimum wage, facing or enduring foreclosure, or homeless are hit with the greed of the oil companies.  Our government is doing nothing to help the impoverished or the struggling middle class. Gas prices are going to obscene levels and we continue to just let our elected officials go on worrying about their own good and not the good of our country7 or our citizens. When will we stand up and be counted and “throw the bums (in lieu of the word I would prefer to use to describe our politicians) out!  Now we have the horrible destruction in the South.  New Orleans has still not been rebuilt from Katrina; how will we rebuild our tornado destroyed towns when we truly are operating under a huge deficit and continue to pour money into foreign lands whether in outsourcing labor, factories, companies, or war. We rush in to help countries who have national disasters; what countries will help us. When we have been their for them, what countries have offered to help us in disasters the scope of Katrina or Tuscaloosa.

I am not finished “ranting” but will save it for the future.  I will say this however the 2012 election will be the election which sets the tone of our future.  When will politicians get out of bed with those who can feather the nests of our legislators and decide to forgo their own greed to help those most in need in our country.  Just pray for our country; prayer is needed now more than ever.  Pray also for those Americans suffering from the destruction of the tornados hitting our South and as always for our soldiers who continue to be in harm’s way. 

Until next time . . .