General Discussion

disgruntled Vietnam Vet Contact

lumbermike — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:50:26 GMT

My E-mail might not be working so I felt it is important enough to leave my phone number and my correct E-mail address. I really hope someone out there understands and would contact me. I did research and found an article from 2007 that was a compliant about Dr. Wu under similiar circumstances. My phone number is 661-366-7599 and E-mail is okiemike007@yahoo.com. I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks!!

Public foreclosure meeting

muuziclady — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:52:39 GMT

I am in need of finding out the name of the company that was here in town holding a public meeting on housing foreclosures about 2 months ago. It was advertised on channel 17 KGET. I would appreciate it if anyone out there remembers this and can give me a name and number to call.

Thank you.

Disgruntled Vietnam vet.

lumbermike — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:49:56 GMT

I have been in treatment at the Veteran's clinic for possible heart, carotoid artery, degenerative disc disease, osteoarthritis in my shoulders, COPD and other problems for about 2 months. I was admitted thru emergency to KMC on 9/25/09 for a possible heart attack and was there 4 days. KMC Dr's. would not sign a release to go back to work and referred me back to Dr. Yung Ping Wu at Veteran's. Dr. Wu would not sign a release to go back to work and would not give me a letter for my employment. He then made numerous appt's. to find out exactky what my health problems are. I have had labs, ultrasounds, cardiac appt's. etc.at Bks., Sepulveda and west L.A. I filled out SDI forms but Dr. Wu refused to sign them, KMC was suppose to. KMC said my primay care Dr. at Veteran's was suppose to. Dr. Wu has refused several times to sign them. Home Depot can't let me return to work until I have a release from my Dr. He still refuses to sign anything. I went to West L.A to have a angiogram done and was there 3 days. They won;t sign anything either, it has to be my Bks. primay care physician Dr. Wu I told him this several times and he still refuses. in the mean time I cannot return to work and cannot receive SDI because nobody will sign the paperwork. I now have not had any income for 6 weeks. I called Stacy at Bks. Veterans to ask if she faxed the SDI paperwork back to KMC the she said she would do last week and she stated that she "faxed it over to San Joaquin, KMC or one of those hospital maybe Memorial". I told her that I was not in those other hospitals and she KNEW I was in KMC. She said she would fax it again. So far she has not done so. I'm tired of being lied to. They are being in my opinion unprofessional, unethical and what they are doing may be illegal. There's much more to my story that I will post later. Has anyone experienced this kind of problem before? Any advice? Please HELP!!!!

Teen Challenge Exposed!

john_burns_sucks — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 00:45:30 GMT

A former Teen Challenge student exposes this abusive Christian alcohol and drug program. Although seen by many as a worthwhile organization, Teen Challenge has a dark side, one of pathological abuse and an obsession with the almighty dollar.

http://www.teenchallengeexposed.com

Taft Area Transit

Alvin Lee — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:28:12 GMT

I just received a copy of the paperwork that needs to be filled out to apply for riding Taft Area Transit Dial-A-Ride. While I think it is a good idea to make sure people qualify, I'm not sure that I like what they put on the back-side of the form. It is an identical application written in spanish. Man that really ticks me off. We speak and read in English. English is the language of the United States of America not friggin spanish. I wish agency's would get that information through their thick skulls and start standing up for this country.

Found...Older yellow male lab

stephsutton — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:02:42 GMT

We found a yellow lab this evening in the area of Stockdale and Jenkins. He is older and really seems to miss his family. Please contact me to identify this loving guy.

Contact information: stephsutton1011@yahoo.com

Dogs to good home(s)

bakerscalif — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:05:59 GMT

Large black rottweiler female

and large brown pit bull female

On Zinnia St at the end of the cul-de-sac. just come and pick up in street.

One at home with fountain (rottweiler) and one at home with large windbreakers (pit bull).

day or night. gates open but please don't enter yard.

Monday Night Football

Alvin Lee — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:57:54 GMT

I was shocked while watching the Jets versus Dolphins football game when the first penalty was explained by the referee in spanish. Have the executives of MNF forgotten that this is the United States of America and we speak English. If I wanted to watch or hear the game in spanish I would have switched channels. I doubt any soccer games announced in spanish have ever had a referee explain a call in English. Then to add insult to injury they had commercials in spanish and sub-titled in English. Give me a break. Monday Night Football you screwed up.

Frustrated

Alvin Lee — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:49:59 GMT

I went into my local bank two times this month to make deposits. I reached for a deposit slip and noticed it was in Spanish, so I thumbed through the rest looking for one in English. To my dismay there were none in English on either visit. I wrote to the bank at their website and reported their mistake. They assured me it would be dealt with and they hoped I would continue banking with them. Let's get California back before it is too late.

Tehachapi Correctional , child support payments

Mamaof5 — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:16:17 GMT

So here it is September 2 and well over 80 of us still have not received our child support from August yet. Let me explain. The guards that work at the Tehachapi prison, who owe monthly child support got their paychecks so they can survive, but their ex-wifes who actually have the children and have to keep the roofs over their heads still have not received anything. The idiots that work at that prison decided last mont to try and save a couple of dollars and send the child support checks over to the state controller through the regular postal system instead of over nighting them like they are supposed to do. So when August 10th came around the state controllers office and the prison's payroll departments phone were ringing off the hooks. They both kept going back and forth blaming it on the other party. WHen in fact it is because the idiots at the prison did not sent them properly. So the state controllers office told the prison to make stop payments on these over 80 checks on August 14, 2009. The prison then started ignoring our phone calls, and not returning phone calls. I did finally get in contact with the payroll manager, who informed me they " were planning" on stopping the payment and redoing them. Well, he told me it was going to happen on August 21, and we should have money by August 26. Of course that didn't happen. Then on August 26 I called again, not the problem has been transfered to another person, and she is very rude and just says I'm sorry for the inconvenience. Sorry, what about how i can't pay my rent or feed my kids, but yet my ex husband who is over $6,000 behind still gets his money and gets to pay his rent. So now as of August 31 the lady in their payroll say that the state controller supposedly received the new check on August 28, and she has confirmation of that. Well I know for a fact she lied yet again, because the state controllers office is closed on Fridays for their furloughs. So now we come to today, we never received any money for August, and now the fathers that owe us money got their money again on Monday, and our September payments are not in either. So apparently this prison has no concern what so ever about how us mothers are going to take care of our children but their guards who owe us money get to take care of them selves. For the guards that are current in their child support orders and who are actually great fathers to their kids I commend you, but as for mine he does neither.

Credit Card interest rates

robrtsoto — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:18:02 GMT

I would like to thank the Obama administration and their stimulus package for decreasing my buying power. By threatening the credit industry with regulation and legislation, they have caused lenders to step up their efforts to squeeze every penney from the consumer they can. Since they announced that they would pass a Credit Card reforms bill every credit card I own has tripled their interest rates and lowered my available credit. In some cases by lowering my available credit and with the increased interest rates, it actually caused me to have an over limit balance. This of course resulted in my being charged over limit fees. Only after calling these companies and arguing with them for several minutes were these fees reversed. If they want to get the economy rolling again this is not the way to do it. I realize that I am partially to blame. After all it became far too easy to use my credit cards than to actually save the money when I wanted to buy something. However I make all my payments on time and don't feel I should be punished for something I have no control over.

Have you gotten your rental deposit back ???

janedelmar — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 01:40:53 GMT

This is a FYI to anyone who rents from RTM Property Management, Inc here in Bakersfield. I moved into Hunter Glen Apt's on Hagaman 2 1/2 years ago with a small dog ( 3 pounds ). I put alarge deposit down and a large pet deposit down. I moved out a few weeks ago and cleaned on the Apt for over 50 logged hours of my time and workers time; cause you see I have ALLLLways gotten my deposit back and you know what I'm very proud of that. Yes there was some normal ware to the carpet but most of it was covered by rugs or all my furiture. Today I found out they are going to charge me approx $ 3,000.00 for the carpet. I know of 5 other people this Property management has done this to in my complex and others they manage. I wonder just how many people they have done this to ? I wonder how under the renters laws of this State thay are getting away with these outrages charges to hard working clean people ?? Who do we call ? How do we/I fight this ? Who is protecting the renters ?

Primary Vs Secondary Blepharospasm / Brain-damage-induced Vs Non-brain-damage-induced Eyelid-twitching / Eye-blinking

ntuc1980 — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:15:34 GMT

Please refer to the following medical explanations entitled 'Primary Vs Secondary Blepharospasm' which is actually an excerpt of my reply to the other party and I hope that the information given will be useful to the intended readers. Thank you.

Quotation :

" 'However, from this posting I have much more clearly understood that your blepharospasm symptoms are a form of secondary blepharospasm, not primary or conventional BEB. BEB is assumed to be a by-product of malfunctioning in the basal ganglia area of the brain, with no known specific cause, but essentially representing a breakdown in the electrical functioning of the brain that occurs at nature's whim, and for which some small proportion of the general population is vulnerable.'

My Reply :

To a very great extent, I do agree with your medical reasoning.

In such critical chronic cases of degenerative neurological / nervous disorders which involve permanent damages of the cerebrum / Celebral Cortex and Central nervous systems /other brain-related damages as Chorea, Celebral Palsy, Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimers / Senile Dementia, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) / Mad cow disease, Parkinsonism, chronic epilepsy/ brain seizures / etc for which there are permanent losses of brain masses / sensory / motor neurons and what you have described as 'malfunctioning in the basal ganglia area of the brain', no 100 % definite cure would be available (in whatsoever cases) in such scenarios due to the underlying fact that neurons / nerve fibres / brain cells cannot regenerate themselves in that when they are totally damaged / destroyed / lost, they are gone forever.

As such, in the cases described above there would hardly be any nerve impulses that would be able to be smoothly and perfectly sent from the brain to direct / result in any bodily movements / motions in the naturally smooth and totally unimpeded ways in the cases as explained above.

Quotation :

'As a skeptic about alternative medicines, I would not expect solutions to BEB from say acupuncture, but I am more open the idea of alternative solutions like acupuncture being helpful in secondary blepharospasm, as in your case of Risperdal induced Tardive Dyskinesia.'

My Reply :

However, in the case of so-called 'secondary blepharospasm' that you have mentioned in your reply, such kind of disorder in most cases actually doesn't involve direct damages of / to the brains / central nervous systems and permanent damages / losses of the motor/ sensory neurons like the chronic cases I have explained above. In such a connection, if the neurons / nerve cells (the cells that are specialized to conduct nerve impulses from the brain to conduct / control the human body movements/motions) actually do not suffer any serious / permanent / irrepairable damages but instead have just their normal functionings of conducting such nerve impulses from the brain disturbed by the other substances that antagonize the neurotransmitters (such as dopamine / serotonin / acetylcholine) comprised in them (the neurons / nerve cells) , a cure from acupuncture to get rid of such neurotransmitter-blocking/disturbing substances (that antagonize the neurotransmitter ) from the related peripheral nerves around the muscles would be available (such as the one I have suggested for Tardive Dyskinesia-induced eyelid-twitching). And please bear in mind that as long as the neurons / nerve fibres/ brain cells / central nervous system (which is made up mainly of the brain and spinal cord) do not suffer any damages/disorders, neurotransmitters (the key elements of neurons) can always be renewed, generated and secreted (by the neurons).

In fact among the eyelid-twitching / eye-blinkng cases that I have observed in my real life and the ones aired over the internet, I just find out and deduce from such related posts that lots of such people would tend to have this so-called 'secondary blepharospasm' problem (otherwise they would have faced great cognitive difficulties to get their problems articulately accounted over the internet and at the same time, suffered from other far more serious neurological complications apart from the blepharospasm alone).

Besides, for most of the neurodegenerative disorders that involve direct serious damages to / in the brain, celebral cortex, spinal cord, neurons / nerve fibers such as the ones that I have mentioned earlier as above, they are in most cases actually verifiable and observable through medical means of CT Scanning and MRI examinations. Whereas, in the case of bodily chemical imbalances which is caused mainly by the interruptions to the normal impulse-relaying activities of neurotransmitters in the neurons (which is not damaged / destroyed), such a medical phenomenon / disorder would actually by no means could be revealed / observable / diagnosed through such medical scanning examinations alone.

As a matter of fact, based on my experience of getting my Tardive Dyskinesia-induced eyelid-twitching / eye-blinking totally cured, I just found out that there are simply certain areas for which the western medical Science appear to be rather inadequate. (For example, such technologies of dealing effectively and precisely with the purely peripheral-nerves-related muscle disorders simply are not available in this mainstream medical field - and that's why my earlier attempts to search for a cure for my eye-sickness from the formal western medications turn out to be futile / hardly yields any permanent and satisfactory results).

Hence, from the viewpoint of a patient who is concerned about nothing else but just for an effective cure for such an annoying sickness, I'm just in an opinion that the suggested acupuncture cure, which have empirically provided great curative benefits to me and other people to whom I have recommended it both in my real life and through the emails, is a more practical and realistic approach of dealing with such a problem.

Quotation :

'I am sorry to hear that the medical profession in your country seems ignorant of the side effects of some of these drugs. We have discussed elsewhere on the board this lack of awareness more generally in the medical profession, so you are less alone in this than you may think, unfortunately.

So I think that the main message we should take from your notes, is to keep ourselves thoroughly aware of which drugs are known to be dangerous in terms of inducing things like blepharospasm. The BEBRF blue brochure lists these, and they have also been listed on this site (see the link below). The only constructive suggestion I can make is for us all to ensure our own doctors of whatever specialty are aware of these drugs and their side-effects, which we can do by informing them, perhaps by sending them the BEBRF brochure.

Thank you for once again warning us of the dangers of certain anti-psychotic drugs, and glad to hear that your symptoms are relieved by acupuncture.'

My Reply :

Actually as a social worker working for the healthcare and benefits of the others, I do hope that such a saddening scenario of the various exploitations of basic medical rights that are denied to certain 'underprivileged' individuals due to 'imperfect information', ignorance on the part of the patients, geographical differences (modern vs less-developed nations), deliberate exploitation by certain profit-driven individuals who have lesser or no regard at all for medical ethics and human lives etc, would come to an end one day. In this regard, I do hope that such relevant regulatory bodies as Food and Drug Administration (FDA) etc and other charity organizations as well as the kind and benevolent individuals elsewhere all around the world would be kind and generous enough to extend their invaluable and prodigious supports in any forms whatsoever for such a humanitarian cause. Thank you.

The Weedpatch Gazette

samheath — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:12:26 GMT

PsychoSearch: Since it is now common knowledge on the stock market, I admit to starting PsychoSearch some years ago. With my background in both science and the social sciences, especially psychology with an emphasis on the paranormal, I realized that regression to past lives held the promise of regression to lives that might have been lived. With the rapid progress of computers, this great dream of mine was finally realized and the classic study of Arnie Schmartzkoptfer is well known.
Arnie's case seemed ideal to me to test my hypothesis that a person cannot only be regressed like Shirley McClain to past lives, but with the computer power now available, could be regressed in such a manner as to predict what that person's life might have been had circumstances been different. The cause of Arnie becoming a mass murderer, killing over seven hundred elderly people in various nursing homes before being apprehended, was well publicized.
A few harping critics wondered how it took so long for Arnie to be apprehended. This was explained very satisfactorily when it became known that the homes in which Arnie was employed used the same methods and criteria for determining qualifications for employment as those of Social Services, particularly Child Protective Services.
As Arnie's trial dragged on with great publicity attached, it became clear to me that something had happened to Arnie as a child that caused him to act out this kind of antisocial behavior toward the elderly. Having honed my hypothesis with the customary rats, guinea pigs, and grad students, I was ready for Arnie.
My reputation was sufficient to gain me entrance to the poor fellow while in prison (the jury had found him guilty of mass murder but innocent by reason of insanity). Of course, the conditions for testing were ideal since he was confined to the psychiatric ward of the prison.
After days of testing, I discovered Arnie had come to this sad pass because of chalk dust. Or, rather say, the lack of chalk dust. Arnie's first grade teacher, a Miss Granola, was quite elderly and well past retirement. But she used dustless chalk for writing on the blackboard.
During Arnie's regression to that point of his life, I discovered that had Miss Granola not used dust free chalk, Arnie would have been chosen to shake out the erasers. Deprived of this special privilege of responsibility, Arnie had subconsciously known he was being cheated; and cheated by an elderly person. What Arnie did not understand was that he was being cheated of the life he might have lived had he been able to shake out those erasers.
With these facts in hand, it was no trouble at all for me to convince a fine lawyer to undertake for Arnie. A new jury acquitted him on the basis of my findings and an excellent defense by this fine lawyer. So it is that PsychoSearch came into being and is now available to all that have been unjustly incarcerated for having been deprived of the lives they should have lived had they not been cheated by those like Miss Granola and dust free chalk.
Where but in America would such a triumph of justice have prevailed? But being the sensitive soul that I am, I was grieved to the quick that some few would misunderstand and misconstrue the noble efforts of myself through PsychoSearch to the point of suggesting that I am a few feathers short of a full duck. Some even suggested, benighted souls they, that Arnie did not deserve to be set free. Fortunately for Arnie, cooler, and may I say more sensitive, heads prevailed. I notice that the willow flycatcher here locally in the Kern River Valley is being subjected to the same abuse as I have been by misguided people who think they are more important than birds.
It is too easy to get caught up in emotions, trivia and peripheral issues and miss the larger picture. After all, was it not for fine legislators, a Supreme Court that cares about America, and my friends like those of the ACLU, caring, knowledgeable and sensitive people just like me, where would America be today? Would the entertainment industry be free to tell children that perversion, gratuitous sex and violence are perfectly acceptable in our great society? Would our teachers be told to teach our children that homosexuality is a perfectly acceptable alternative to normal sexual behavior?
When well meaning but misguided adults and parents try to keep such things away from children, don't they understand that children know they are being cheated, deprived of the total experiences and realities of life? Such things will always lead to warped psyches and the poor Arnie's that engage in anti-social behavior.
Granted that a few eggs are broken in making an omelet, like the 700 plus elderly that Arnie dispatched (mercifully, by the way), how can it fail to grieve sensitive people that the real blame was that of a society that simplistically, even callously, failed to take his feelings into consideration? What can you say of a system that would fail poor Arnie in such a manner? This was a miscarriage of justice that cried out for amelioration!
Fortunately, most of the response to my being instrumental in freeing Arnie was quite positive. Not a few commented on the constructive action of his making so many beds available (which are becoming a premium) in nursing homes, savings in Medicare, SSI, etc. In fact, not a few suggested... but I digress.
I only regret that PsychoSearch and my services were not available for another poor misunderstood victim of society, Jeffery Dahmer. How that cruelly tormented man must have suffered! No one seemed to take his side. Imagine if you will, suffering the addiction of cannibalism. You develop a sweet tooth for something like this and few trouble themselves to understand the control it has over your life. But where was the compassionate understanding of our justice system in his case? Conspicuous by its absence!
In correspondence with President Obama, whom I found most interested in my efforts as he attempts to fix a badly broken health care system and was most sympathetic toward Arnie in particular, I have made it clear to this fine leader of the free world that he needs to take look at the death penalty. Far too many in Texas, for example, are being executed, innocent victims like Arnie, that if my talents and PsychoSearch were put to use, would be found to be stellar citizens if society had not failed them in the way it failed poor Arnie and Jeffrey.
But how many are inclined to think of such people as victims? We should beware of the labels given such people, labels like mass murderer, rapist, serial killer, labels that are strictly detrimental to justice and mental health, labels that deny the merits of the individuals and beat down their self-esteem. How can clear-headed people fail to see how this produces victims like Arnie? Regardless the slings and arrows of the misguided, PsychoSearch (with the continued help of the ACLU, Supreme Court, Alec Baldwin and Hollywood in general, and People for the American Way) will carry on in the cause of fair play and justice for all.

The Weedpatch Gazette

samheath — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:37:15 GMT

“Listen up, Adam; let me put it this way. If you don’t take a bite I’m cuttin’ you off’” A slanderous, vile canard, a calumny has been raised against me. I did not accuse Eve of threatening Adam with having to sleep on the couch if he did not cooperate with her and the Serpent in eating us out of house and home. I simply raised the possibility. A far greater possibility, to my mind, was a threat to Adam’s “manhood.” I think it far more likely that Eve appealed to Adam’s ego, his sense of “superiority” as the “High Mucky Muck” of the Garden. “What kind of wimp are you, anyhow, Adam? scairty cat, scairty cat, afraid of God. The Serpent and I aren’t afraid. I took a bite and nothing happened. Big man, afraid to do something to stand up to The Boss. The Serpent’s really got your number. If you were any kind of a ‘Real Man’ you wouldn’t have to let a woman go first!”
Ah, gentle reader, the possibilities are really there. You men, what would you have done in Adam’s place? Taken “Abiola’s“ advice and given Eve a punch in the mouth? Or, like Adam, possibly, let the “Real Man” in you feel threatened and “rise to the occasion?” Or, would you, as Adam should have done, as a truly Real Man would do, obey God and let Him handle the consequences?
Well, in any event the possibilities are fascinating but the bottom line is that Adam “hearkened” to Eve and we live with the results of his rebellion to God and his failure toward his wife. I do wonder if Adam became the first Wife-beater as a result. Perhaps this would account for their first son, Cain, becoming a murderer. Adam did try to blame God and Eve for his own failure. That was a poor beginning for a relationship. It may be the reason that God finally had to destroy the world by a flood and start over again with Noah. Unhappily, Jesus was correct in pointing out things weren’t going to get any better until God calls an end to this age.
Now if Eve had been smart she would have moved to California before all this took place. If poor, old Adam tried that “Rulership” nonsense here, then she would have divorced him and her lawyer would have made sure the “Mine” was “equitably divided” so she would have gotten the gold and he would have gotten the shaft. She would have wound up in Mink instead of “leaves and skins.” But, alas for poor Eve, there was no California at that time and lawyers hadn’t been invented back then unless you count this as one of Satan’s areas of expertise, something that comes readily to mind.
In any event, Adam could hardly have been looking for a suitable companion among the beasts of the field. So I think it possible the Serpent described as beautiful and intelligent may have been in the running; and if a female we know “Hell hath no fury…” So when God came up with Eve, the Serpent having been rejected by Adam may have laid plans for an ambush. She gained Eve’s confidence, invited her to Tupperware parties and so on, all the while plotting revenge. The Biblical account infers Eve was used to visiting with the Serpent so there was no surprise by the creature striking up a conversation with Eve when the Serpent felt the time was right to initiate her revenge.
Jewish theologians came up with a “first wife” of Adam called Lilith in an attempt to make sense of things. But I think the Genesis account has it right with the Serpent playing the hypotenuse in the Eternal Triangle. Whatever the truth of the matter, God’s curse fell most heavily upon Eve and the Serpent. The curse of sex and the ruler ship of men over them would be most harsh on women.
Since the curse of death took quite a while to come about for Adam and Eve, it may be the Serpent didn’t immediately start crawling on its belly but may have gone off to the land of Nod and waited for Cain’s arrival, the two of them producing children of the Devil leading to violence filling the earth. This may explain the commingling of the “sons of God and daughters of men, the further progeny of Adam and Eve and those of Cain and the Serpent. But things got so bad God was sorry He made man and he could only find Noah worth sparing. But there would be the perverted son of Noah, Ham, who would start the whole thing of violence all over again and we live with the results today.
Well, it isn’t to be wondered I have had more than a little difficulty finding a church “home” when I speculate about the things of the Bible.

The Weedpatch Gazette

samheath — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:37:36 GMT

In attempting to make any sense of what Obama and Congress are trying to say when they aren’t busy “explaining” what they are not trying to say I’m reminded of too many preachers I have known that fall into the same category.
Not long ago, I was in conversation with an old friend of nearly thirty years. We are good enough friends to love each other “warts and all.” I shared with him my concern that preaching, since we both are “men of the cloth,” does not meet the needs of people.
Grandad was an imminently practical man. It was practicality more than anything else that “ruined” me as a “professional educator” and preacher. In education, having earned an honest living as a machinist and mechanic for years before becoming a teacher, I faced the “fairy-tale” world of make believe that is inhabited by “Ivory tower” citizens, those without the haziest idea of the requirements of the real world and “teach” accordingly.
By far my most disillusioning experience in education was trying to teach a class of graduate students who were prospective teachers. They were incapable of writing a proper paper and had come through the “system” to graduate status, fresh B. A.’s in hand, and unable to do even adequate, undergraduate writing tasks. But their respective colleges had told them they were “well educated.” I shudder when I think of it.
But seminaries have not done any better in preparing those that “heed the call” to “divine service.” Is there life after Hebrew, Greek, Hermeneutics, systematic, and dogmatic theology? I’m afraid not in most cases.
The Bible is very practical. Much of it is in the category of “If you touch the stove, you will get burned!” variety. But the flowery obfuscation of erudition will cover a multitude of sins according to modern “exhorters.” No matter how thin you slice it, it still comes out “baloney.” Without application to real life, without the merit of real teaching (I am appalled by what even well-intentioned men have the nerve to call “teaching”) these so-called sermons are too often nothing but attempts to earn a paycheck at best and ego-inflators at worst.
“You know,” my brother told me on one occasion, “Stealing is wrong!” To fully appreciate this remarkable revelation of my brother’s you have to understand that it came to him at fully thirty years of age. I could hardly fault the soundness of his theology and had to agree with him.
Now my brother and I had been taught that stealing was wrong but it took events in our lives to take the “abstraction” and move it to where dear old J. Vernon McGee would say, “The rubber meets the road.” It does seem at times “abstraction” is what preachers, as with politicians, major in. But God deals in absolutes. We are supposed to teach our children not to steal. If they do steal, we are supposed to punish them. If they are obedient and do well, we are to reward them. Simple ethics. But somewhere along the line, sermons became “professional.” The minister pours over “notes and outlines,” reviews his commentaries on various “proof texts,” inserts his favorite “humorous story” and “current events” and he is ready to “minister to the flock.”
The fact that such “sermonizing” has little or no effect in the lives of either the preacher or congregation does not seem to faze the “professional soldier of the cross.” He is at his best when he can take today’s headlines and, with feeling and “Scripture,” convince his audience that they have done battle with the “powers of darkness” and learned something of value. What that “something” is, none can tell specifically. But the best of these “pulpiteers” leave the people feeling that something of worth, intangible as it may be, transpired.
My particular prejudice is that the professionals have never considered how God feels about all this. He is, after all, supposed to be the “Boss.” Maybe, it is as simple as most of them not really caring about how He feels about it.
I do believe that most people, the “leadership” included, have a completely erroneous concept about the very nature of God. The “party line” is that God is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent. This is simply, by His own Word, The Bible, not true.
In sharing this with some people a while ago, I met the “party line.” In good, orthodox “religionese,” these people made the record quite clear; they have a solid church and school background and expect someone to accept a few, well chosen, religious terms to be accepted as explanation of a position when all that has been said is a parroting of meaningless gibberish, albeit perfectly acceptable gibberish unless an explanation is insisted upon, by the faithful.
The tragedy of this was the fact that they really believed they had actually “explained” something when, in fact, had said nothing. Now I love these folks but their egos would never allow of a “pagan” like me to contribute anything of substantive value that might disabuse them of their own cherished prejudices.
The “rightness” of their own “orthodox answers” to my “heterodoxy,” carefully cultivated by adhering to the party line, lo these many years, does not insist on answers to the really tough questions about the nature of God; much safer (and, seemingly, more intellectual) to parrot the “professionals” whether you really see the inconsistency in their apologetics or not.
Unhappily, the party line does not answer the really tough questions of life. Nor does it answer to the needs of people. And here is where the professionals fail. People need help; not religious platitudes, pious phrases and sanctimonious “holier than thou” pretense.
Perhaps it is my serious concern for children and young people that led me to some “unthinkable” conclusions about the nature of God. My grandparent’s little church in East Bakersfield was a happy place. It took organized religion and the “professionals” to teach me that God didn’t know how to have fun or appreciate a good joke. But after my years of being a good, orthodox “professional,” The Lord was kind enough to make a few things clear to me. Among these “new” lessons was the fact that He would like us to be able to include Him in our laughter and enjoyment of life.
Walt Kelly was one of my early teachers in political and religious humor. Being a “Pogo” aficionado, I am reminded, when I think of those “sober brows” that try to rob us of enjoying our relationship with The Lord, of a keen observation by “Seminole Sam.” He said: “Wonder what language the Romans used for the old 14 karat bamboozle?” This as a reaction to Owl’s use of Latin to attempt a “scam.”
In religious circles, the languages are Hebrew and Greek. But, too often, as in Law, the bamboozle is the same baloney. Of course, it helps, as Elmer Gantry learned, to use some of those 16 cylinder words like Eschatology and Supralapsarianism, etc. to accomplish the purpose.
No one who knows me would accuse me of denigrating the hard, honest work of God’s scholars. I consider them among the “Gifts” to His Church. I am speaking of the abuse of learning and scholarship by those that willingly or ignorantly, “twist” God’s clear intent.
It was a simple matter for me, as a shop teacher, to teach young people the value of being able to use a lathe or mill, of being able to overhaul an engine or build a radio. But they could see such skills as desirable things to acquire; these “Learnings” had relevancy.
The abstractions of math and language were more difficult. They are also more difficult to assess in terms of immediate benefit. As adults, we know how very badly such skills are needed for survival in a technological society; but how to make them as desirable as learning to do a valve or brake job? When the skills lack the incentive of easily seen desirability and relevancy, you are left with having your students accept yours and a society’s assessment of their value.
Preachers fail miserably in both cases. They not only fail to teach the necessary skills for living, they try to “bamboozle” people by religious clichés and “spiritual” nonsense.
But, these “colleagues” seem determined to “explain” things by religiosity and “mumbo-jumbo” that makes no sense to poor benighted souls like me. I suppose Walt Kelly could *** the balloons of these pompous asses without rancor but I have the disadvantage of having to have worked with too many of them personally, both in the churches and the schools.
As religious leaders have failed to impart real knowledge, have failed to call sin what it is, have failed to provide real, moral leadership and substituted situational ethics, Hollywood entertainment, their own peculiar theologies for the clear Word of God, they have led an entire nation to judgment.

The Weedpatch Gazette

samheath — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 21:41:51 GMT

Shadow of the past: I have taken a break from the writing to “visit the folks” out at the old mining claim in Boulder Gulch and do my “walkabout.” I like to visit the old pines and granite boulders and commune with my great-grandmother, grandmother, grandad, and my brother Ronnie. I like to think these departed loved ones hear and see me. I ache for their love and counsel when I don’t know what to do or what I should be doing. Whether it’s true or not, I find comfort in the thought that they are with me in a way that transcends our limited physical “reality.”
I walk up the hill behind where the “main” cabin used to be. Ronnie and I, on one of his infrequent visits with our mother, sled down this slope on barrel-staves one winter when we had a nice snowfall. The old cabin had served as a cook shack until grandad, with some “help” from me, had added on to it. In the summer, we would move the old, wood cook stove out of doors and cooking and eating took place under the pines.
Great-grandma (always “grandma” to Mom, Ronnie and me) took up residence in the other cabin. How I miss sitting in her lap while she would read to Ronnie and me.
I stand under the tall, old pine where I shot the hawk. I was feeding the chickens and rabbits when I spied the Red-tail land on the very top of the tree. The .22 Remington single shot was, as usual, close at hand. I always kept a gun close in case of Indian uprisings, bear and lion attacks and the usual calamities which were sure to occur to a “pioneer woodsman” in the “wilderness” (Thanks, James Fenimore Cooper).
Unfortunately, the only round I had with me was a “short” already chambered in the gun. Now I know, looking back, that the Red-tail was probably not a threat (unlike owls and the wild donkeys) to our livestock. But it was a real enough “threat” at the time to me as a child and, carefully shouldering the .22, I took aim and fired. The hawk came tumbling down through the branches.
Running up the hill, I saw the hawk. He was standing on his legs, lop-sidedly, bracing himself with his right wing on the ground much as one might use a crutch, and breathing heavily. His bright, intelligent eyes pierced me. It was soon obvious that, due to the low velocity round and his natural “bullet-proof vest” of feathers, that the small bullet had only knocked him off his perch. The fall had probably done him more hurt than the small slug.
I entertained the thought of doing him in with the butt of the rifle but, for two reasons, did not. One: I might damage the gun and, two: I simply could not bring myself to do violence to such a noble bird when he was so obviously at such a great disadvantage. I won’t flatter myself as to which of the two objects of reticence were most objectionable. I’d like to hold to the latter, and nobler, motive.
For some reason, perhaps my Choctaw Cherokee heritage, I struck up a conversation with the Red-tail while he huffed and puffed, gathering his strength and getting his wind back. Now those of you not familiar with the ways of a boy in the woods might have cause to wonder about having a conversation with a hawk (or any other critter) that is lacking in the social grace of making small talk. But, for me, it seemed perfectly natural that I would be discussing the nature of his present discomfiture and “explaining” what had happened.
The Red-tail did not seem particularly impressed with my explanation; in fact, he seemed rather in a hurry to terminate the discussion with little regard to the polite niceties of civil conversation. Looking back on the incident though, I’m reasonably sure, had the hawk been able to voice his opinion of the affair, he would have added greatly to my, then, woefully, deficient knowledge of maledicta.
Teetering back and forth, he brought his dragging wing back up into normal position and, taking an experimental hop, began to hop, hop, hop, down the hill, his wings taking a couple of practice flaps. After a few yards of this exercise, he gathered speed enough to make a low-level take-off. Wings now fully distended, he glided downhill slowly a couple of feet off the ground. Then, with a few, slow flaps of his wings he began to gain altitude. Finally, he was high enough to soar over the opposite hill from me and out of sight.
As I stroll the hills among the rocks and trees, the old, familiar sites bring on both the aching melancholy and the precious memories of precious loved ones. My readers of some years have heard most of the stories. I know you understand the state of mind and heart that keeps drawing me back to this site and a few others of like preciousness. These are the “pilgrimages” that help me to maintain a perspective of the “best of the child” in me, that nourishes the poet and keeps butterflies and trout streams not only relevant, but essential; and most essentially the gentleness of strength to confront evil and to love sacrificially without any sense of sacrifice. How else I often wonder, to love God and one’s neighbor as oneself?

The Weedpatch Gazette

samheath — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:09:00 GMT

I warned during Desert Storm that it was only the “opening gun” to a permanent U.S. “presence” in the Middle East. I also pointed out the “need” for the U.S. to establish itself in Africa. Seems Somalia is the staging area for this “need.” In spite of congress being Israeli Occupied Territory, the need for a gateway to the Arab oil fields has always been a given. Somehow, I don’t think it takes that much perspicaciousness or suprasensibility to figure all this out- certainly I didn’t think Arab nations were having any difficulty doing so.
Americans used to be able to face elemental realities; they no longer do so. We have been cheated of the inalienable rights to do so. For example, why shouldn’t a man be able to have a couple of acres and build a cabin on it for his family at a total cost of about $10,000? Get rid of the unconstitutional “building codes” and a family, once more, could actually own their own home rather than renting from the bank! Common sense alone dictates that a family would far rather reap the benefits of their own labor than be slaves to the state and its banks. And, again, common sense dictates that children are far better off being raised in an environment of family and family labor for family benefit than the drug and crime infested cities. Who stole this natural right and personal liberty from families?
The “Land” is still there. But who stole the opportunity for men to be men, women to be women and children to be children? By all means, read Cooper, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe and a host of others to get at the bitter root of the problem. Of America Theodore Parker wrote: “There is always a conservative element in society...which resists the further application of Christianity to public affairs...Here I think it is represented by the merchants.... Here trade takes the place of the army, navy, and court in other lands.... It takes the place in great measure of science, art and literature.... All is the reflection of this most powerful class. The truths that are told are for them, and the lies.”
We do not lack for Savonarola's in our own history. But where are they now? Were it not for my being the beneficiary of Hawthorne’s “cursed habits of solitude,” I would have been far more outspoken in time past. Since I have long agreed with Brownson that “...no reforming leadership could come from ‘priests and pedagogues’ ...They always league with the people’s masters,” I have found myself the recipient of a far deeper orthodoxy, that of Truth, Fact and Reason.
I admit to the “frailty” of hearkening more to the cricket’s song and the call of the quail than to the staccato yammering of commerce but: “Let men, true to their natures...lead manly and independent lives; let them make riches the means and not the end of existence.... This curious world which we inhabit is more wonderful than it is convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used.” And, please, don’t mistake either Thoreau or myself for those that would abuse men at the cost of saving an owl or tree! If Truth, Fact and Reason held sway, such a “choice” would be neither “convenient nor necessary” because of the truth of the fact that: “I would rather suffer evil the natural way.... The only good one can do another is to give him an example of a true life.... and to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship, but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely.”
In Thoreau’s attack on the laws and Governor of Massachusetts in which he correctly, and prophetically, labeled such laws as enslaving by keen and subtle masters worse than Southern overseers, he called to the higher law of God as evidence of the chicanery of politics. “What signifies the beauty of nature when men are base? ... Who can be serene in a country where both the rulers and the ruled are without principle? The remembrance of my country spoils my walk. My thoughts are murder to the State, and involuntarily go plotting against her.”
Without ignoring the fact that “getting a living” and caring for a family is of the greatest importance, acknowledging that Plato might have found the society of philosophers “comfortable” because his aunt remembered him in her will, there is still the essential need for the philosopher and poet. I could wish that the necessary poetry and prose for our time could be read with such purity by men and women that they could do so without harm and still understand. But such is not the case. Fact, Reason and Truth dictate that the issues have become such that nothing but a candid ruthlessness offers a way out of the present chaos.
One such truth is the fact that the opportunity for necessary, menial tasks that provide learning and independence are denied our young people. Just what “learning” and “opportunity” are there in “flipping hamburgers?” There is far more of building character in digging holes, weeding gardens, caring for livestock and making the earth yield her increase, of framing your own cabin on your own land, than anything our young people presently learn in our schools.
If young people could learn these tasks, and they would, given a wiser and more responsible and caring, elder generation, in the hope of maintaining their own independence and liberty, we would restore their hope of a future. Given the proper parameters of responsibility and liberty, given the proper role of the schools to advance technology by relying on aptitude and propensity rather than a dilution of the lowest, common denominator, the future could be restored to our children. Reading, writing and ciphering to the extent of necessity is learnable by the end of the fourth grade. The complexities of literature and history, of higher mathematics and science, are the purview of a society that both cherishes its young and, at the same time, acknowledges the necessity of providing those practical skills that enable young people to “do for themselves.”
Obviously having lost our moral moorings and being without a moral compass, the young bear the brunt of a careless generation that has betrayed their hope of a future, and without moral absolutes how could it be otherwise? If I’m to be labeled “Intolerant” of the agenda of sodomites, of that kind of “cultural diversity” which is engendering racial strife, destroying any hope of reclaiming the birthright of my children, if I am to be called “bigoted and prejudiced” by the enemies of my America, so be it! Let the battle lines be unmistakably drawn and take a careful look at who is doing the name-calling!
If there is to be abuse heaped, let it come on my generation that betrayed our children! Would young people be drawn to rock stars and pornography, drugs and violence if we hadn’t countenanced the evil, from the beginning, rather than taken a stand against it? Maybe it will have to come to the point that good men and women must serve their time in prison as a testimony against such an evil system that is destroying and enslaving our children. If such is the case, it would be ignoble for us to be outside of prison!
Maybe the time has come to trade the Caesar-created class of “drug criminals” for those, like myself, who harbor Thoreau’s brand of “murder of the State” in our hearts! I will take my stand with Patrick Henry who, under better circumstances than those patriots face today said: “If this be treason, make the most of it!” Far better to be adjudged of such “treason” than supporting and enabling, especially by silent acquiescence, the real treason that is presently cloaked by the infamous laws and distortions of reasonable laws, that have stolen our liberty and promises to enslave our children!
As for the churches, may God do what is necessary to bring them to their knees; this is the only position from which they have any righteous appeal to Heaven! But God has given fair warning of His judgment beginning with His Own House!

Antipsychotics / Neuroleptics For Mental Disorders - Comments

ntuc1980 — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 15:05:13 GMT

In terms of antipsychotics / neuroleptics meant for the treatments of mental disorders , clinical evidences actually indicate that those troubled with mental disorders, especially the serious ones, shouldn't just rely solely upon the medications as the one and only means of solution to their mental problems.

To put it bluntly, such medications, they are no different from sleeping pills whereby their calming effects just 'come and go' after the lapse of their effective period whilst their potential disastrous side effects can be permanent upon manifestations. In medical sense, such mental disorders, especially the serious ones is mainly caused by the malfunctionings of the mood regulator neurotransmitter, especially Serotonin in the brain. Next, though the related medications can to a certain extent bring such a severe mental disorder under control by 'artificially' regulating, blocking and controlling the re-uptake of it in the brain of the persons suffering from it, medications alone however, by no means would be able to deal conclusively with the problems due to the fact that the root causes of such a disorder is actually resulting largely from the environmental, circumstantial and other interpersonal factors (or the changes of them) that are deemed to be emotionally and adversely unacceptable to the ones suffering from it to a very great extent. Such negative changes in turn actually account for the negative behavioural changes in them as described

In short, it remains the truth that most of the antipsychotics / neuroleptics meant for especially the treatment of chronic mental illnesses would tend to work in such a way that they would need to change / alter the chemical balances in the brain of those taking such medications in the process of bringing such disorders under control. In the process of doing so, such a mechanism would unavoidably and eventually antagonize the neurotransmitters of the nervous system, especially the serotonin and dopamine (which is necessary for various neuromuscular functions), and hence disturb and interfere with the normal functionings of the nerves of the human body.

Next, though it may take years for such undesirable side effects / scenario to manifest onto the ones taking such medications, I am just in the opinion that in the case of the medications having potentially such unwanted side effects, it would naturally be the duty of the medical personnel / specialists-in-charge to take all the precautionary measures to safeguard the well-being of the patients for the sake of their healthcare and welfare.

The real-life examples that I have come across so far is such that for the ones relying merely upon medications and nothing else to deal with their mental disorders, they would tend to develop both emotional and psychological dependences upon such medictions over the long-term whilst getting their mental conditions deteriorated from time to time, eg, from neurosis to psychosis and then just acquire all those almost irreversibly disastrous undesirable side effects like Extrapyramidal Symptoms, Tardive Dyskinesia, Dystonia, Akathisia, Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome, Parkinsonism disorders etc from such medications in the end.

In such a connection, psychotherapy, counselling, emotional and other communication / interactive supports would be needed to complement the use of the related medications to achieve greater curative effects for such patients troubled by chronic mental disorder.

As such, medications is one thing, but the mental / cognitive abilities of the patients themselves to eventually change their views and perceptions about their environments / surroundings, circumstances and people they are facing in a more positve way, particularly developed through the help of such counselling supports from the others in order for them to really get better and gradually develop positive behavioural / personality changes, is simply another thing that cannot achieved solely with the help of medications alone.

In a nutshell, medications alone by no means can be a substitute for the positive interpersonal experiences that such patients would eventually need for genuine improvement and recovery of their sanity and the use of them should at the same time be complemented by other psychotherapy efforts to achieve the purpose of holistic healing.

Lastly, I hope that the information given above will turn out to be useful to its intended readers. Thank you.

Related References : -

Extrapyramidal Symptoms (EPS) :

http://schizophrenia.emedtv.com/extrapyramidal-symptoms/extrapyramidal-symptoms.html

Tardive Dyskinesia (TD) :

http://schizophrenia.emedtv.com/tardive-dyskinesia/tardive-dyskinesia.html

Antipsychotics :

http://schizophrenia.emedtv.com/antipsychotics/antipsychotics.html

The Weedpatch Gazette

samheath — Sat, 30 May 2009 01:41:40 GMT

Shadows from my past: She is a beautiful young woman with a beautiful little girl. When she called me, she asked if I would store her things because she was going to jail. When I got to her place, she had them all packed and ready for me to put in my truck. It was a pitifully small amount of possessions. She had lost so much so many times because of the booze and drugs, because of so many unworthy men in her life.
So many like this young woman were led into drinking by alcoholism in the family, among the men she dated and lived with. Booze and drugs are “a monster of frightful mien.” But the monster, when embraced, shows its true character by destroying people.
She was drunk when I arrived at the decrepit mobile where she lived, a structure that looked like it should be condemned; the typical residence reeking of the poverty of the hopeless. She had to have done the packing a good deal earlier since she was thoroughly incapable of doing so now. I've had a lot of experience with drunks. I lived with an alcoholic whom I loved deeply. I got my real education in alcoholism from her.
I watched this girl who was facing jail as she literally rolled in the bare, dry dirt of the yard in 98 degree heat playing with three, large dogs. She didn't even notice or care that her beautiful, long hair was flaying about in the dirt. She was wearing shorts and I could see her lovely legs were bruised and scratched from running into objects and by the claws of the dogs.
It literally broke my heart to watch her. Here was a beautiful, young woman who was a beautiful person when sober; loving, sensitive and intelligent. But when drunk, I had witnessed a Jekyll and Hyde personality. The Hyde personality was ugly, loud, vulgar and combative, the result of a hideously abusive childhood and an equally abusive adulthood. When drunk, the bitterness, anger and pain, the awareness of her own self destructive behavior, her self-loathing and loss of hope would come pouring out.
Raucous music was blaring from a cassette player. She was going to jail and said she wanted to enjoy her last bit of freedom. The booze and the loud noise, rolling in the bare dirt with dogs were her idea of enjoying her freedom. She knows I'm a writer. She has read my Birds book. She once told me she wept over nearly every page. I've had several women, tragically, tell me the same thing.
I know better, by my knowledge and experience of the diabolical, than to remain any longer than necessary to place her things in my truck. I know I'm at risk even being there while she's so drunk. But I'm thinking of her little girl. At least her little girl won't lose everything this time by my taking care of her things.
Until you see a beautiful, young woman rolling drunkenly in the dirt with a bunch of dogs licking and pawing, biting and scratching her, seen her turn mean, vulgar and ugly, you haven't seen Pope's Monster vice of frightful mien. Until you have seen children suffering from the Monster, the Beast, suffering watching a mother or father in such a condition as this beautiful, young woman, suffering from the loss of love, suffering too often the abuse, molestation’s, even their torture and murder, you haven't seen the Monster, you know nothing of the diabolical.
This took place on a Sunday afternoon. It was Monday morning when I got the call from the Sheriff's detention facility. It was the young woman. She asked if I could please come and get her since charges were not going to be brought against her and she was going to be released. I asked where her little girl was? She said with friends. I shuddered at that. It could mean anything.
When I picked her up, she was still wearing the same dirty shorts and blouse she had been wearing while rolling in the dirt Sunday. She was a real mess. But she was sober now. The first priority was the little girl. Since I knew the Chaplain at the facility I had him intervene to get a message to the young woman about my concern for her little girl and good man that he is, he hastened the release of her mother.
She asked if I could please give another young woman who had just been released a ride into town. Many people released from the detention center have no one to help them, not even to give them a ride into town. Since it was on our way, I agreed. As we drove, the other young woman said she had heard of my proposed amendment. She said if that had been the law when she was a child, perhaps she wouldn't have been molested as a little girl and maybe her life would have been different. She said she would tell others about the amendment and I could count on her support, to let her know if there was anything she could do to help.
I know, of course, that while she means well she will probably go right back into the kind of life that caused her to be jailed. That repeating cycle of hopelessness that has its roots so many times in molestation and other forms of child abuse. What chance do such children have as adults?
After dropping the other woman off, I stopped to get a couple of items. One was a Shelly Doll for the little girl. I knew this would help soften the reunion of mother and daughter. Another item was a compact game kit containing things like checkers and chess. Then we went immediately to pick up the little girl. But there was some confusion as to her whereabouts. It took almost two hours of scouring neighborhoods before the young woman recognized the correct area and we found the right house.
I knew I was committed to having the young woman and her little girl as houseguests. They had nowhere else to go except back to the same environment where a drunken couple the two were living with would only precipitate the same crisis.
Once back at my place, the young woman and her little girl were able to eat and bathe. We did laundry so they had clean clothes. The young woman doesn't have anything but gives me her jail slippers saying maybe I could use them since they were too big for her anyhow. When she was arrested, they took her away in her dirty clothes and no shoes. But she was too drunk at the time to notice or care. It was very late by now and I made up the sofa sleeper in my living room for the two of them and we all went to bed exhausted.
The following day was consumed by making the rounds of places like Social Services. The couple that had the young woman arrested had forged her signature in order to steal her food stamps. That meant a visit to the Sheriff's office as well. I'm all too familiar with this routine. Then, a trip to the clinic for physicals and a check for things like head lice. We stop at the grocery store for some much needed food items.
Children have different priorities than adults. It's summer. It's very hot. I had a strategy for doing some work after sunset this first, full day with the three of us together when it became cooler. But the little girl had another priority, the fishpond in the back yard. At the beginning of summer I usually clean the pond and reset my pump to circulate water creating a small waterfall. The birds and animals really enjoy this. But I had procrastinated and the job remained to be done.
Because of the urging of the little girl, the pond became the evening's priority. And, sure enough, with her helping, the pond was cleaned, filled with fresh water; the pump was in place and operating before nightfall. But I had to admit that her sense of the priorities was better than mine.
The three of us had two, full days together. I was calling a number of people and agencies to try to get help for more suitable living arrangements for them. But the toll on the young woman was dreadful. She was an alcoholic and not being able to drink was stressing her out considerably. Her mood swings were increasingly severe and typical of the alcoholic going through withdrawal.
But she wouldn't agree to AA or a rehab program so I wasn't surprised when she asked me to take her and her little girl back to the same place with the two drunks that had precipitated her arrest and stole her food stamps. There was no choice for me. You don't reason with an addict. They will sell their souls and their children's souls for a drink or fix. In the case of this young woman, I knew it was a dead end when she accused me of being more concerned for her little girl than I was for her. When a parent's priorities are that badly skewed, you know you've done all you can.
But I warned her that if any harm should come to her little girl, I'd make sure all three adults would go to prison and there would never be any more help from me. My major fear is the risk of molestation and other forms of abuse to which the little girl is at hazard from the alcoholism of her mother. Such lifestyles are a major factor in all forms of child abuse.
With a heavy heart I took them back to the hellhole where I knew a beautiful, young woman would be drunkenly rolling in the dirt with dogs once more. But I've informed neighbors and the proper agencies to keep watch for anything that threatened the little girl. Social Services and CPS have provided for periodic visits. I've done all I can do. And, as always in such cases, it isn't enough. It isn't nearly enough. But I'm a well-trained and experienced Behaviorist. I was able to do one thing of substantial value in the short time this young mother and her little girl were with me. I was able to get the young mother to heartily resent me. There is a therapeutic value, at times, in the kind of resentment I fostered in this young woman. But only someone with a great deal of experience with such people dares practice using such a mechanism.
She knew that I was fully aware of the kind of men she consorted with. She had told me so much of her own past, had poured out her heart to me and wept for her little girl and the kind of life her drinking had exposed the child to that she became vulnerable to suspicion of my using such intimate knowledge against her, of throwing it into her face as others had done.
People will react in different ways to genuine charity and love. They may well be properly grateful or they may resent, even hate the benefactor; but to the therapy of resentment. It began with my being the only one she could call who would pick her up from the detention center, then buying the doll and game kit for her little girl on our way to pick her up. It was furthered by the things I provided for her and her little girl, the many places I took them so the mother could start getting some necessary priorities attended to. But more than anything else, it was my interacting with her little girl that will be burned into the young woman's memory.
We are sitting in the Social Services office, waiting for someone to talk to the young woman. Her little girl has the game kit with her and asks if I would like to play a game of checkers? Sure. We set up the board and play a game of checkers with the diminutive pieces. Then I suggest teaching her to play chess. I show her how to set up the pieces and explain a few of the primary moves each piece can make. She is fascinated; she's an exceptionally intelligent little girl with the kind of hurtful maturity that comes from the loss of so much of a normal childhood and the kind of life she has been forced to live with drugs, alcoholism, welfare, and various men in and out of her mother's life and no father. Her mother is watching intently as her little girl and I enjoy the games. A scene burned into her memory.
Back at my house, I show the little girl how to use my computer. She writes a paragraph about a large bunny rabbit. But I'm not surprised that the rabbit is a monster with huge fangs and part of a child's nightmare. This little girl has had a lot of nightmares and no baby bunnies or ducks. One part really rips at my heart where she writes: “That's my mom, she's ok.” She has an excellent gift of language and imagination. She could easily become a writer. And her mother is watching the interchange, the bonding if you will, between her little girl and me. More memories. There is the fishpond episode. Her mother watches as her little girl and I clean the pond and get it set up. More memories.
We are all sitting at the kitchen table and her little girl proudly tells me about a loose baby tooth. She says she has lost almost all of them and has nearly all her adult teeth. Such things are real events in a child's life. I'm glad she thinks we are close enough for her to share such a momentous and personal event. I'd be happy to play tooth fairy once more. But she's too old to go for that, I think sadly.
Then, suddenly, the image of that drunken woman trying to hand me her bloody tooth pops into my mind and I wince, thinking of this little girl and her future surrounded by booze and drugs, of vile men in her mother's life; the perversity of memory; the natural fears of people who care about children.
She asks if we can try playing another game of chess? She is properly intrigued with the game and is anxious to learn it. I say, sure. I'm grateful to shake off the fearful, mental images. In no time, the little girl is learning the proper moves of each piece. She is a very quick learner. Her mother watches us together. More memories.
I show the little girl my karaoke machine. I put on a tape and sing her a song. No man she has ever known has sung to her. She smiles in a shyly delighted way through the whole song. Her mother watches and listens. More memories. In a very short time, the little girl is asking if there is anything she can do in the house or yard to help me. The desire of a child to please those who take an interest in them can be heart rending. I purposely come up with a couple of things so the little girl can feel she has returned my kindness to her. More memories.
I share a few of the stories I used to tell my own children of my pioneer life as a child in the wilderness. The little girl is fascinated, as all children are, with my life and adventures in the forest with the critters. More memories. By now I'm sure the reader must have gotten the point.
No matter what the future holds in the life of this young woman, the mental pictures of her little girl and me, the things we did together are etched permanently into her mind. And they will be nightmares to her until she quits drinking and gets her life in order. This little girl will be wondering, even asking, why she and her mother can't have the kind of life I presented to them? Proper attention to her as a child, the lack of alcohol and vulgar language in the home, the chance to learn and explore without loss of patience by adults, no being screamed at, no drunkenness, fighting or abuse. And her mother won't have an answer. Children are very perceptive; this little girl especially so.
With every drunken episode, the mother's resentment of me will grow; her pain for her little girl and what she is doing to her will get deeper. The memories; the mental pictures of that child and me together doing the normal things a parent should do with a child will become ever more vivid. She will resent me for my judging her without my saying a word of condemnation not realizing that it will be she herself doing the judging; and, her little girl.
The hoped for effect of such therapy of resentment is obvious. It may be the very thing, which will enable this young woman to get her act together, and her life on the right track. She will, I fervently pray, try to prove me wrong about her; that is, prove me wrong in the light of her perception of what she believes I think about her and she will try to “Show Me!”
But with addiction, I have learned there are never any guarantees. Only hope, hope that the torment and nightmares of the memories of her little girl and me together will become greater than the torment and nightmares of going without the booze and drugs.

The Weedpatch Gazette

samheath — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:54:15 GMT

I keep pounding the drum that America has a responsibility, among the community of nations, to be the first nation in history to be honest in its professed love of children, to be honest in accepting the fact that our children are, in fact, our most precious resource and our only hope of the future. It was for this reason that nearly twelve years ago I began to work on a Constitutional Amendment to protect children from child molesters:
Proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution
An adult convicted of the molestation of a child will be sentenced to prison for a term of not less than ten years.
If the child dies as a result of the molestation the person(s) convicted of the crime will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
A child as defined by this article shall be one who has not attained their sixteenth birthday.
The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
While the proposed amendment languishes without support from any in Congress or even the churches how can America, in all honesty, avoid the stench of hypocrisy by intruding into the affairs of other nations on the basis of human rights and ignore the most fundamental and inviolable human right of all, the right of a child to be raised in protected innocence? Dr. Jess Diamond says we must ban violence. What a revolutionary idea! And we all agree. But where and how to start has been the bane of humanity.
I did not come up with the truly revolutionary idea of this amendment overnight; quite the contrary. It took many years following false trails, many years as a parent, a teacher and administrator, a pastor, a worker in social services, so many attempts and struggles with so many ideas before the amendment even suggested itself.
It took decades of work and experience in many areas, it took fighting for needed reforms in education and politics, it took the writing of reams of material addressing widely diverse subjects, the writing of theses, a doctoral dissertation and six, lengthy books to provide the foundation for the answer to the two, most prominent questions I faced every where I went in respect to the ills of America: “What can I do and how can I do it?”
Even at that I had to deal with the very points people like governor Glendening and others have brought up. Yet, in spite of the many obstacles, I finally had to admit to myself that nothing short of the amendment can accomplish the purpose.
I am without any illusions concerning the enormity of the task. Nor do I minimize the legitimate questions well-meaning opponents of the amendment bring up to me. I am also aware that these have not had the years of mulling the problem over in their minds that I have had, that they have not been personally involved with children in all the circumstances that I have. Yet even the most obtuse would agree that there can be no more noble monument to any nation than to take this step, the first in history, to take such a stand for the sake of the future of America and the human race.
Woman is the antithesis to war. Women hear the cry of children much more than do men. Women do not bear children to sacrifice them on the altars of the violence of men. But men do not listen to women. So it is that I appeal to the Momma Bears to take their rightful place of working for passage of the amendment, to finally make their voices heard against the violence of men.
Revolutionary? Yes; in every need and sense of the word. A New Thing is needed worldwide, a new thing that promises with hope of success a banning of violence. Only then will humanity be able to reach out to the stars and devote its energy to the colonizing of space, but to take the violence of humanity with it? Unconscionable!
Violence must be supplanted by devoting the need of men for challenge and risk-taking, pioneering and exploration, of proving manhood to reaching out to the stars. And you ladies are to be the inspiration for meeting such a challenge.
This is why I say, categorically and without contradiction that the compatibility of differences between men and women, rather than competition and combativeness, must become our goal. And men and women must recognize, accept and work together on the basis of each being of equal value!
Tired and gazing into the distance, scores of destitute girls have arrived in Bombay too traumatized to reveal what happened to them before their mysterious mass deportation from Saudi Arabia. Police and social workers fear the girls are the victims of a child prostitution or labor ring. Some say the 76 girls, ranging in age from 6 to 15 were abandoned by their own families. Tattoos of flowers and fish skeletons found on the hands of most of the girls may have been used as identification marks by someone who controlled them in Saudi Arabia. This was a recent article buried in the pages of a metropolitan newspaper. What were these children doing in Saudi Arabia? How did they get there? How many died? Children too traumatized to even answer such questions. Who cares?
I have a lot of trouble finding people who care. It isn't a subject that most of my friends will even discuss. Very seldom does any friend even ask, “Say, Sam, how's it going with the amendment?” Social denial. People don't really want to know about child abuse. It is a dark and shameful thing, the stuff of nightmares for those who do care, for parents who must constantly be on guard against becoming a Kanka, Klass, Russo or other parent who has had a child stolen, tortured and murdered by free-roaming, predatory beasts in the form of men!
Elementary schools: a natural for such predators as teachers. A former Lamont, California elementary teacher, one Thomas Hamley, recently admitted he molested his two adopted sons. His admission came on his being accused of molesting two school children.
The Boy Scouts: another natural environment for predators. Social workers: Another natural environment for them. The churches and so on. And all the while it becomes increasingly difficult, by perverted laws that cater to perversion, to even question the backgrounds of applicants for positions in such institutions. And some, like Social Services, actively recruit homosexuals for its ranks!
I sometimes like Clarence Paige's commentary. But he failed miserably in respect to Judge Bork's book “Slouching Towards Gomorrah”. I wasn't too surprised at Clarence's hit piece. I know him well enough not to be surprised and I understand while in no way excusing his prejudice. It remains inexcusable. But why would he write such a distorted hit piece about Judge Bork and his book? Because Mr. Paige actually believes in untrammeled personal freedom without concomitant responsibility at the expense of our future as a nation; is he really a judge Scheindlin without the judicial robe?
Far better, and far more objective, is the view of Mona Charen who rightly says that Judge Bork has done us an inestimable service by calling attention to the corruption in the laws and arrogant courts that cater to a perverse minority at the expense of the majority, elitist laws and courts that act as though there were no absolutes of morality and decency. Most certainly Judge Bork uses Gomorrah as an appropriate analogy. And few would disagree that revolution is the answer.
But the revolution that is needed is a revolution against violence, one that requires children to be raised in protected innocence. It requires men and women accepting and treating each other as of equal value. It requires encouraging the compatibility of differences between men and women rather than competition and combativeness. It requires the peoples of the world banning violence and raising a generation of children able to fulfill the highest potential of the human race.
Such a generation will produce the poets, composers, artists, philosophers and scientists able to reach the stars. Such a generation will bridge the gap between the hard and social sciences. Such a generation will be able to make the computation of Love divided by Hate equals Ambivalence and make sense of it for the purpose of confronting and banishing hatred and ambivalence toward evil.
But the violence in the world by Emerson's Musket Worshipers together with Americans committing intellectual and moral suicide via King Sports and Queen Entertainment is not conducive to philosophical, critical thought or anything like an appreciation of art and poetry.
Thoreau well said: “I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality. ... We quarter our gross bodies on our poor souls, till the former eat up all the latter's substance.”
The proposed amendment isn’t going to go away so long as I am alive. It cries out for action, but it must be action by those who have not quartered gross bodies on their poor souls, till the former eat up all the latter’s substance.

The Weedpatch Gazette

samheath — Sat, 16 May 2009 15:44:08 GMT

I count it one of the real blessings in my life that I have not had to wear a watch in years. But I worked hard all my life to reach such exalted status and have earned the right to go without wearing a watch. My time is my own. And it being the most valuable thing I possess, I try to use it to the best effect. For me, that best effect is the writing I am compelled to do, my own “curious labor.”
So I shun appointments like the plague. I revel in spontaneity. And having punched a clock for so many years, I never take the liberty I enjoy for granted and I thank God daily for it. But I also realize the great responsibility I have for using this blessed time wisely; at least as wisely as I have the light to do so.
I write a good deal about the necessity of civilized manners and speech; but these are learned behavior. James Boswell bears quoting on this subject: “There is no doubt that there may be an excess of luxury by which the more solid properties of man will be weakened, if not annihilated. In observing individuals, we find that a keen gratification of appetites and tastes, as produces exquisite pleasure of an inferior and slight kind, which can be repeated with frequency, indisposes them for steady, noble enjoyment; and to borrow an admirable metaphor from Goldsmith, in his life of Nash, their minds shrink to the diminutive size of the objects with which they are occupied. A mind so shrunk and shriveled, as to take in only petty delights, is averse from those extensive satisfactions that are suited to the dignity of human nature, in that state to which, amidst all our imperfections, it can at times be raised.”
Well, if Boswell had been aware of Hollywood and TV, he would most certainly have expanded his excellent and sage comments on the ability of petty entertainments and luxuries to shrivel the intellect as well as good manners and speech. Are such things being annihilated in America? I think they are.
The corrosive and cancerous disease of the petty pleasures of entertainments and good times to the exclusion of thinking of our future, our children and their welfare, of what is really best for our children, as opposed to what is noble, will most assuredly and ultimately destroy us if not cured in time. Bread and circuses are as much a part of human nature now as they have ever been; just another proof of our having never attained wisdom.
But what Boswell wrote is knowledge, not wisdom. And it is knowledge which humanity has possessed from the very beginning though Boswell states it in quite memorable words with his own peculiar and quite distinctive genius for doing so.
Obviously any person or society that gives themselves over to petty entertainments and petty luxuries is never going to advance in truly civilized speech and behavior. These require the restraints of self-discipline. But only wisdom can possibly lead to the effective application of such knowledge, to the effective restraints and disciplines needed. And America sorely lacks wisdom.
If anything, Boswell perfectly illustrates that the facts of even correct knowledge do not automatically lead to wisdom and the two should never be confused. This is very much like my continued warning to people that they should never confuse what they believe with what they know. The result is chaos and bigotry in too many cases.
I have always gotten a chuckle out of the story about the meeting between Dwight Moody the great American evangelist, and Charles Spurgeon the great English pulpiteer. At one point during their conversation Moody points to Spurgeon's cigar and says: “Brother Spurgeon, don't you know that is sin?” Spurgeon riposted, poking Moody's more than ample girth: “Brother Moody; that is sin?”
And while it was obvious Spurgeon never missed a meal, there is no doubt that Moody dug his grave with a fork. And his remark to Spurgeon always reminds me of the story told by J. Vernon MaGee of the dinner where American Christians were hosting a group of German Christians at a large restaurant in Los Angeles. The Americans were thoroughly condemnatory of the Germans drinking beer. The Germans were outraged at the American women dressing like sluts. Well, a little self-righteousness always goes a long way.
In my library, I had the complete set of The Metropolitan Pulpit, the encyclopedic set of Spurgeon's sermons. I also had and read his multi-volume commentary on the Psalms. Not having been formally educated, Spurgeon spoke better than he wrote. His sermons, while printed in full by The London Times, weren't models of erudition. But his preaching held parishioners spellbound. He was an orator, not a writer.
The Times also printed the sermons of Joseph Parker, one of Spurgeon's contemporaries and held in great esteem. Unlike Spurgeon, Parker was well educated, very erudite, and a very good writer. I had the complete set of Parker's commentaries (as encyclopedic as that of Spurgeon's sermons) and they were very good and quite enjoyable to read.
A reporter for the Times was interviewing Spurgeon and asked somewhat jocularly: “Sir, do you expect to see Joseph Parker in heaven?” To which Spurgeon replied: “No, I do not.”
The reporter, aghast at Spurgeon's reply, asked: “Sir, why ever not?”
Spurgeon, lowering his head, replied: “I expect he will be so close to God Himself that I will be too far removed in order to be able see him.”
Now I got to know both men very well from their writings. I also read extensively the secondary material from varied sources about both men. I would like to believe the story about the reporter from the Times; I would very much like to believe Spurgeon was quite sincere in his self-deprecating and extraordinarily humble observation concerning himself and Parker. Such humility, as opposed to so much self-righteousness that abounds among the religious, would be a real tonic and can't fail to bring a tear to the eye. Because of this, I would occasionally use this anecdote in one of my sermons. And how I liked to believe Spurgeon's humility was matched by my own in those days. How wrong can you be!
My problem with the story, once I came to realize and accept the fact that I was only a common, garden variety sinner, was this: Successful men get caught up in their own press (often self-manufactured) and begin to believe it. This is deadly.
Because of my familiarity with Spurgeon while wanting to believe better of him the skeptic in me knows he was quite capable of playing the expected role of the humble servant of God. And he knew his reply would be of great credit to him in such a capacity. It also put Parker in his debt.
My experience in the churches, my great familiarity with the Bible, the book remaining my primary textbook, my formal education and the education I have received at the hands of the real world cause me to question motives. I not only question my own wisdom, I am constantly questioning my motives in nearly everything I say and do.
One thing of particular interest to me, and one which I bring to my readers because I know they will be interested as well, is the subject of death. Philosophically, it is argued that we don't have much time or get much of a chance to develop living to a high art, life being a very personal and singular thing and of comparatively short duration.
But we get far less of a chance to practice dying or develop the art since it is a one-time only and terminal event. Besides, who in their right mind would want to practice the art of dying? I am so very familiar with religion that I can say without fear of being contradicted that the basis of religion is the attempt to formulate a philosophy of death ever as much or more than a philosophy of living.
Oh, I credit religion with attempts to formulate a philosophy of life as well. But whether death comes as a gentle friend to relieve suffering, or a mad and ravenous beast to rip, tear and devour, a philosophy of death is at least of equal importance to people as a philosophy of life since the one serves to interpret the other for us. As a result, the very real and inescapable issues of life and death are the focus of religion and philosophy. Because of this, I draw a great deal of my writing from these two sources of inquiry.
Good and evil, life and death, these are the fountainhead of religion and philosophy, of art, of the grandest or the most corrupt, of human endeavors. In humankind's search for wisdom, however, often grievously erroneous religious and philosophical concepts have led us a wrong path. They are great and grave errors to confuse belief with knowledge and to confuse knowledge with wisdom.
A formal and disciplined education in religion and philosophy most often leads people to believe that in the study of the great thinkers throughout history, one is studying and learning wisdom. Not so. What is being studied and learned in most cases is knowledge. And while so very beneficial, and essential, it should not be confused with wisdom.
James Boswell and Charles Lamb are excellent cases in point. I very much wish all people would read the great English and American essays (I don't include the great German, French, and Italian writers because that would be lifting hope to a dizzying, ethereal height which would be, to say the least, unrealistic). There is so very much to be learned from doing so. I have certainly not become so anile as to fail in continuing to derive much knowledge from this salubrious exercise of my mind.
Having quoted Boswell, I give you Charles Lamb. In his essay “Witches, And Other Night-Fears”, Lamb points out that just as there is no law to judge of the lawless, there is no canon by which a dream may be criticized. “Credulity is the man's weakness” he says, “while being the child's strength.”
Just so, a careful reading of the works of Boswell and Lamb will quickly apprise the reader that, indeed, there is nothing new under the sun. What was before still is. Yet it remains for one generation to pass on the knowledge of the one to the next. And there will always be, hopefully, those of genius who will use the right words and phraseology to do so. And it remains the responsibility of the new generation to learn what is beneficial from the old. But having said this, the cautionary word remains that belief never be confused with knowledge, that knowledge never be confused with wisdom.
It is well to weep over those things, at times, that we cannot remedy. Such deeply rooted feelings in those sensitive to such things can help in our race for wisdom. And it is a race, of that I have no doubt. Number 92 looms too ominously on the immediate horizon. And not to dispute Lamb, it is my waking dreams that trouble, that make me a poet, the maker and the teller of the stories that are needed to make the ordinary, and ordinary people, extraordinary. It is, after all, the ordinary and ordinary people who are the stuff of the real tale of life. Marvelous men and women come and go. But the ordinary, the real heroes and heroines, remain to carry on at their lasts and anvils, the raising and caring for children, the next generation in the story and from whom the marvelous men and women of the future are to come.

The Weedpatch Gazette

samheath — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:49:18 GMT

The following is excerpted from The American Poet Weedpatch Gazette of 1999; soon to be back in print: Put me with any group swapping lies and I can always hold my own. But require me, as with that young woman to J.B. Priestly, to tell all about myself? Instant mental pandemonium! As with J.B., I'm always prepared with the lion's part written. But faced with the roar of the nightingale, the lion becomes mute.

Like Clemens, I have known good men, honorable men, even men of the cloth, who knew nothing (or pretended not to know) of that most distinguished game of real gentlemen, Draw Poker. And I have known good men, honorable men, even men of the cloth, who had no facility with the telling of a good and well-contrived lie. So much the pity I feel for such culturally starved and deprived creatures so lacking in the most essential, useful quality and sensitivity of true, moral character.

How, now I ask you, is a real man, a man of distinguished culture and refinement, of real sensitivity to the finer things in life, to hold a legitimate conversation with a beautiful member of the opposite sex without facility in one of the most useful and essential devices in any man's armory in such cases? Why the poor soul without such is, above all others, most to be pitied!

Women are marvelous in playing their part. They expect a man worthy of their consideration to be able to hold his own with the best in the use of this device. They are naturally attracted to those men who have proven skill in the ability to command their interest by such a time-honored facility in the use of this mechanism directed at them. It makes the woman feel appreciation for the kind of man who would go to such trouble for her benefit alone.

But just imagine the poor soul so lacking in probity of wit, not equipping himself as a gentleman of the first cloth, so lacking in perspicuity and perspicacity as to deny a woman her right to hearing delicious lies in tribute to her beauty. Such men are most certainly no fun at cocktail parties and are invariably boorish oafs.

The kaleidoscope is a marvelous device. As a child, I was entranced by it. As I grew a little older, I became entranced and fascinated by the study of fractals, of the symmetry in nature as exemplified by the patterns of colors in butterfly wings in which I delighted as a child, the symmetry to be found in all of nature.

And what normal man isn't entranced by the symmetry to be found in the physical attributes of a beautiful woman? Without such beauty of symmetry, there would be no poets extolling her beauty.

Now that same study which began with things like a child's toy is making it possible for us to entertain the idea of teleportation and star travel. But we should never forget this started with things like the kaleidoscope and the patterns in butterfly wings. And the physical attributes of a beautiful woman.

Studies in particle physics are well on the way to proving that we do, indeed, live in a sea of consciousness, that Psi, the paranormal, will be understood through the efforts of such research and the hopes of men like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and others will be realized.

A frequency of sound that can produce heat and light is a realized fact in sonoluminescence. Who is to say that a frequency may not yet be found that would enable those passed on to communicate with us? Entrancing idea; it certainly entranced Doyle.

The ancient poet/historians were composers of music. Singing and music were spoken, and later, written, without instrumental accompaniment. Instruments to accompany words were a later invention. We still retain some knowledge of this in our language. Her words were music to my ear, or My heart sang, for example. The melody and harmony of Nature's Universal Lyre so popular with poets is another.

Without wisdom, we most certainly will destroy ourselves. And I will continue to maintain that the proposed Amendment for the protection of children from child molesters is the place to start in becoming wise, that a philosophical abstraction can become a reality by this New Way, a new way that has never before in history been attempted.

Fearful as it is because of so many unknowns, fearful because of a Dark Ages mentality that infects so many; the Amendment still holds promise of true enlightenment. But just try to find someone with whom you can have an intelligent discussion beginning with my equation for peace. In most cases, you get a vacant, glassy-eyed stare. This is the basis of my fear of our running out of time. Books have proliferated on the concern about the intellectual loss in America. We could hardly be called a nation of intellectuals. Congress alone gives one cause for fear on this basis.

But where is the book that emphasizes the need to prioritize children? A lot of abstract lip service but no specific like the proposed Amendment that emphasizes this need in order to avoid our destroying ourselves; neither does the book exist, apart from my own with documentation, which places an emphasis on the absolute need of women being equally involved in The Great Conversation.

Where is the wisdom of selfishly conceiving unwanted babies and then murdering them by abortion? Where is wisdom when some are too rich while others are starving to death? Where is wisdom when people are divided, and even murder each other, in the name of God or politics? Where is wisdom when ideological or racial hatreds continue to proliferate? And lacking wisdom: If not now, when?

Do I really enjoy dealing with all of this? Absolutely not! I most sincerely wish it were some other guy. And, as I often think, maybe it is that other guy, the one I blame for such thoughts and writing. I only know, as I've often pointed out, that for some reason he behaves as the Hound of Heaven who will not leave me alone. I do this by a compulsion, not because I want to.

It's Friday; this morning the sun shines brightly through the windows where I (or that other guy) do the writing. Tonight I will go to the Club (since the churches close up shop early and aren't open on Friday or Saturday nights and if we had a museum or art gallery they would be closed as well) and enjoy shooting pool, listening to the music, and dancing with the ladies. I'll still hope I can duck quickly enough if I have to. I'll try to ignore that other guy.

I won't meet anyone who wants to discuss my equation for world peace, that Wisdom + Knowledge = Peace, but I will hear some new stories of love and romance, of betrayal of love, of who just went to jail or got out, and maybe there will be a fight over one of the girls. Or between a couple of them; a catfight as it is called. But when I come home, I know I will lie in bed unable to sleep until that other guy has his say.

The other night we were having this discussion about the real objective of learning, knowledge, and education. I say discussion though that other guy seems to do all the talking. Obviously most get an education in order to make their way in life. And that's as it should be: but what about character? Shouldn't children be learning about character as well, both at home and in the classroom? Well, I had to admit that was true. And this should be one of the objectives of learning, knowledge, and education.

Citizenship. We used to teach children to be good citizens. What did that mean in the context of what children are actually learning about America and its leadership today? I shuddered at that. Come to think about it, now that that other guy had me thinking again, curse him, when I was a child good citizenship was one of the goals of education and emphasized at home and at school. When had that passed away?

Like good manners and correct, civilized speech. When had those stopped being objectives of education? Well, the albatross of that other guy led me long ago to start thinking about the last time poets worked in America, the time of the great Broadway Musicals. Seems America was losing sight of good citizenship, good manners, and correct, civilized speech as objectives of education about the same time; both at home and in the schools.

I had given a copy of one chapter of my novel to a girl and she later told me: “Sam, I don't know how you wrote this! I had forgotten I had such thoughts and dreams when I was a little girl. And you're a man, a grown man! It must have taken a lot out of you to write that way.”

Admittedly it does take a lot out of me to write that way. But as I recently shared with a friend, thank God I can still think and dream like a child! It hasn't been beaten out of me yet and I thank God life has not made me hard, cynical, and callous. I still delight in the magic of childhood, in Santa, the fairies and elves, enchanted forests and glades, I still believe in the best of Camelot, of Knights and their Ladies. I still delight in birds and animals, looking through a kaleidoscope and watching butterflies, baby bunnies and duckies.

The Weedpatch Gazette

samheath — Sun, 10 May 2009 19:53:06 GMT

The following excerpt is from my book “The Lord and the Weedpatcher.” With all the bad news I thought some of you folks could use a little cheering up:

My daughter Karen and my son Michael shared in many of their dad's proclivities for adventure. Part of the reason, sadly, was that their mother didn't want them around. So, when I went somewhere, they went with me. As they grew older, the adventures became more adventuresome. They will have their own stories to tell their children. I hope they do it with charity toward their father.

This buddy and I would often go out to Kramer's Junction and hit the dirt roads until we got many miles off the highway. Out around Hamburger Mill Site and the Cuddeback and Harper Dry Lake area, we would begin to encounter our quarry: Jackrabbits.

Using single actions with fast draw rigs, we would fire about 100 rounds per rabbit. The fun was in the shooting, not the killing. And, it was as good an excuse as any to get out of the city.

Since we re-loaded our own ammo, I cast the bullets, the shooting was cheap. We could afford to be profligate in bouncing rounds off rocks.

Reloading can be a lot of fun. When I first started as a boy, I'll never forget seating my first primer with my Lyman tong tool. I was loading for the .270 and was as nervous as the proverbial cat in a room full of rocking chairs. But .270 ammo was expensive and, with true grit, I mastered the skill in order to be able to afford to shoot. I've never regretted the learning.

But my buddy missed throwing a charge once and nearly cost me a day's shooting. We were out at Cuddeback and a large, old jack bounced out of the brush. Pulling my Colt, I tripped the hammer only to have the round go pumph instead of bang! Staring at the gun, I was amazed to see the bullet sticking halfway out of the end of the barrel. Only the primer had fired and with sufficient power (about 600 pounds pressure) to force the bullet that far.

Far from our truck and with me cursing my buddy roundly, we started the long walk back. Suddenly, right there in that trackless, vast dessert there was a pair of rusty pliers right in the sand in front of me. Talk about serendipity! Using the rusty pliers, I was able to pull the slug from the muzzle and we were back in business.

Because of our crusade against verminous ground squirrels and jackrabbits, this fellow and I began to kid about a 500-pound rabbit looking for us to get even. I never realized that my little girl, Karrie, actually believed there was a monster rabbit after her old dad until she recently told me of it. You sure have to be careful around little ones. They have vivid imaginations. Even worse, they cannot discriminate when listening to grownups talk about 500 pound rabbits and the one that got away. And we all know about the veracity of fishermen.

I got even with this fellow the night I shot out his truck window. Well, shot out may be too strong. Actually I put a BB hole in it. I happened to be driving that night and among the weapons we had brought with us was a CO2 powered pellet gun. Just for fun.

Now the rule was that the windows were to be open so as to fling a round at the bunnies without the trouble of stopping the vehicle. But this poor fellow was cold and had rolled his window up. Sure enough, a rabbit bounced up on his side and with electric speed I flang a shot at him with the pellet pistol. But my buddy’s window was closed.

It got real exciting for a moment as the BB zinged around the cab of the truck. Amazingly it didn't hit either of us. But there was a neat little hole in the center of the window and a thin crack straight up and down from it.

There was some discussion following this trick: “Why was your window up! Why did you try to shoot me! If I'd really wanted to shoot you, I'd have used the .357 you dummy!” And many other good-natured, comradely remarks. But he got even.

It was our custom to reload for the driver. One day, (I was driving and using the Colt as usual) a jackrabbit jumped up and I began to shoot. Bang! Click. Bang! Click. Bang! Click.

Now one of the reasons that this fellow and I are such good friends is the fact that we share the same twisted sense of humor. He had only loaded every other chamber in the Colt. Great fun; for him. Now you shooters out there understand the fun of shooting at bounding jackrabbits is seeing the clouds of dirt, rock and dust being blown around the poor things, educating them to the perversity of human nature and hastening them on their way, feeling the good, honest buck of a fine weapon in your hand, not the occasional and accidental killing of the poor things. But only a low-down skunk would do such a thing as cheating your bosom buddy to half a load. It also galled me that he thought of it first.

Remember the skit of Bill Cosby saving a snowball for revenge? Of course my buddy could no longer trust me to reload for him now. This was one drawback of his little joke. But, like Cosby, I waited.

It was nearly two years later. We had gone to Kelso Valley. My buddy had forgotten- I hadn't. I can wait a long time to get even and I never forget. He usually used a Ruger (just what you would expect of someone who would do such a dastardly thing to a friend. Anyone knows that only a Colt Single Action Army is suitable for the real purist). But this time he had brought a .22 auto and, thinking all was forgiven, was letting me reload as he was driving. Sure enough, a rabbit bounced up on his side and Bang! Click! Being an auto loader, one shot was all he got. Served him right. Justice is sweet. So is revenge.

What he was so appreciative of was my steadfastness, patience and ability to wait him out. I'm sure he knew there would come a time and was glad to get it over. But you can't help loving someone that shoots out a sliding glass door with a.45 Colt Auto- One of this fellow’s neater tricks as he was demonstrating gun safety to a neighbor while living in Carson. His wife was not amused. But surely God gets a chuckle out of our antics. He has to have a great sense of humor.

The Weedpatch Gazette

samheath — Sat, 02 May 2009 17:26:19 GMT

“Take our lands and make us your slaves but give us bread for why should we die?” Thus those ancient Egyptians cried out to Pharaoh to save them during the severe famine that ravaged the land. Joseph had “saved” the people at the cost of enslaving them. During the decades I worked with thousands of children in the schools, I was forced to watch the “enslavement” of our young people just as surely as what happened to those Egyptians. No, I didn’t see hoards of emaciated bodies; I witnessed the starvation of their souls, of their hopes of a future, the destruction of their families through the evils of a society that no longer cherished its children, and denying God, had no answers for the geometrically mounting problems of that society. And, denying God, only “Pharaoh” remains to “save” us!

Will men and women of Reason come together for the sake of the children? I hope so. I live in such hope. I don’t require such people subscribe to my belief system; it is only required that they be reasonable and have a genuine, caring concern for children and families. They must, of course, in order to be able to offer practical solutions, be qualified and experienced to do so. Good intentions, as with the “stroking of egos,” alone, will never suffice.

“A new broom may sweep clean but an old broom knows where the dirt is!” When it comes to the sins and ills of education, this “old broom” knows where the dirt is. You can only gain limited input by bringing someone from the educational establishment into converse with someone from industry, for example. Both may be knowledgeable of their own areas of expertise, it takes someone with experience in education to know its problems and someone with experience in industry to understand its needs. But the happiest confluence of conditions and circumstances that would promote reasonable solutions would be for people with experience in both areas to have the authority to address the situation and such people are exceptional.
Winners, not losers, write history. Only now are we able to deal with many of the unpalatable facts of our own history as a nation, with the histories of WWI and WWII. Granting that our present level of communications technology makes hiding the facts more difficult, atrocities still are committed by the “good guys.” In cases like Randy Weaver and Manfred Roeder’s, evil men and systems can still, like bad doctors, “bury” their victims and “mistakes.”
But where are the atrocities of Muslims being paraded in the MSM? And it seems the barbarians of the drug cartels in Mexico are at least just as barbaric.

A few years ago Mr. Stephen Fahsbender, of radio station KNZR, made an excellent point in his paraphrase of Jesus’ statement: “What does it profit a nation to gain the whole world and lose its soul, or what will a nation give in exchange for its soul?” Perhaps the switch of radio station KIWI from easy listening and classical music to “either Spanish or Adult-oriented rock” spoke to the point.

But, the leadership today is woefully ignorant of the wisdom of the past. One of America’s earliest writers, C. B. Brown wrote: “How little cognizance have men over the actions and motives of each other! How total is our blindness with regard to our own performances! I have erred, not through sinister nor malignant intentions, but from the impulse of misguided, indeed, but powerful, benevolence.” So it is that I have come to pray; Lord, protect me from well-intentioned men, men who mean well but have neither the experience nor qualifications to actually do well!

People have an itch they can’t scratch. Since they don’t generally know what is best, or even, for that matter, what they want, they look to leaders. God help them when such leaders are no better than “well-intentioned!” But I cannot bring myself to believe Obama is even well-intentioned.
It may be our War for Independence was driven by profit as some suggest rather than ideals. The best of ideals seldom carry through without profit raising its head somewhere along the way. The Founding Fathers erred greatly in my opinion by not abolishing slavery by our Constitution thereby planting the seed of our eventual demise as a uniquely distinctive world power and I see the beginnings of ending up as those ancient Egyptians offering themselves as slaves in exchange for bread.

There was great promise for America in the past and I agree with Abel’s assessment that Cooper wrote the American Epic in his Leather-Stocking tales because “...they are an implicit idealization of our national adventure.” Cooper’s theme of the victory of love over lust is lost to this generation. Curiously, men of different races and cultures learned to love one another during the Viet Nam war. The “good” part of war is the emotional high, the camaraderie, and the dependence on others to do their part when your life is at stake, the pulling together in common cause and, the dark side of love, the common hatred of a common enemy, and the fact that wars are about power and profits.

Cooper was one of our foremost social commentators. He, as so many other thinking men, came to the inescapable conclusion that class distinctions were impossible to avoid. Too bad Marx, Engels and others couldn’t see the truth of this maxim according to Cooper: “Classes do, and will, exist in this country, as an incident of civilization; a truth every one can see as respects those below, though his vision may be less perfect as respects those above him.” Lincoln gave his own dour assessment by saying the Negro would never be the equal of the white man.

Cooper, because of his privileged status, earned the enmity of those that, because of their own lack of either genius or privilege, understandably tried to pull him down to their level by the very same name-calling and subterfuges in the guise of “democracy and fairness” practiced today. Say what you will, Carnegie, for example, had a valid point in this regard. But Cooper recognized the common greed inherent in men and, like Jesus Christ, “knowing their hearts, did not commit himself unto them.” Cooper fought the good fight and, regardless your opinion of whether a “landed aristocracy” is more productive of Enlightened Self-interest as opposed to that of Manufacturers one must admit of the fact that a ruling class has always prevailed in government.

Our so-called “public” schools are dedicated to producing an underclass of thoroughly ignorant future citizens which will be easily led, not by Enlightened Self-interest, but by an equally thoroughly unscrupulous and greedy, well educated, upper class. As I warned years ago, the schools are in the business of producing a “Slave Generation,” not educated men and women who will accept responsibility, hold themselves accountable and be productive either to posterity or to the general welfare.

Because women have generally confused “equal rights” with “equal value” I installed in my “data base” a few years ago the following: “Duke University recently named Nannerl Overholser Keohane, a woman, as the University’s president. Clinton is busy naming women to important government posts, and a woman, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, billing herself as a Jungian analyst has a best seller titled: “Women Who Run With the Wolves.” The only thing that saves this book from falling into the relative merits and interest level of such works as “Great Moments In Ping-pong” is its unashamedly anti-man phraseology. Couched in the usual language and phrases of pseudo-intellectualism, the Man-bashing book rides the crest of the waves of the media propagandized frustration of all those women with that itch they can’t scratch; somehow, some way, it is all a conspiratorial conceit of men that makes any distinction of any real differences between men and women. I may have to go back and re-read my own book on the subject. I had come to the conclusion that there were some real differences! But I had come to the conclusion that the differences were created of God to be compatible, not competitive or combative. I did not accept Sam Clemens’ conclusion that “Men and women are natural born enemies.”

But so long as their sex is confused with their true value concerning equality women will be the slaves of men, and as to a nation of slaves the present Caesar and the dogs feeding at his table will not have a fence between America and Mexico, but if all factors such as housing, welfare, schooling, loss of jobs for legal citizens, etc. are considered, illegal aliens cost the California taxpayers about $30,000 a head per year. It takes the taxes of about thirty-five honest, working, California citizens to support each illegal. This is money lost to the citizen’s own children and family, the California economy, etc. Now you don’t have to have the wisdom or loquaciousness of a tree full of owls to see where this leads- just where we are, a state that is literally bankrupt because of such “entitlements” given criminals, the illegal aliens that too many legitimate American citizens here in my native state cannot afford for themselves!

When is the leadership going to wise up to this fact and say and do the hard things which must be said and done, something like the current Swine Flu but will kill hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions here in America? And when is my generation going to accept its responsibility for allowing such a destructive travesty of government to come into being and flourish instead of passing the buck on to young people? We made the mess, not our children! It is this abysmal failure to accept our responsibility and be held accountable for the mess that has led us into Cooper’s “Institutionalized Iniquity!”
It is easy enough to understand the thinking of men like Emerson and Thoreau; I spent enough time in pulpits and the churches and education to do so. My “failure” to become an “amiable” man in these institutions proved my undoing. It is easy enough to understand the disillusionment of Emerson and Thoreau, as with that of Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Adams. Even as I have witnessed over the past decades, the betrayal of our children and our nation through the selfish disinterest and apathy of “amiable” men and women working in unconscious collusion with the wicked enemies set on our destruction and enslavement to Caesar. And I cry out, once more: Who speaks for the children!

Emerson marked those that had forsaken the ancient landmarks, grieving that grief teaches them nothing. No matter the common stirrings in the souls of people as they look out at the stars or the beauty of God’s creation all around, if the lessons of grief are lost to a man or woman, they have little to offer of any practical value to others, particularly to children. It would seem our present “leadership” has learned nothing of the lessons of grief, but on the contrary are set on being the cause of enormous and possibly terminal grief for America, especially if our leadership should fail in confronting the enemies of Israel before we lose the power to do so for the “greater good” of a “New World Order.”