I have been silent for a while … Again!! But no longer. A week ago our nation went to the polls to elect a successor to President Obama. I went to the polls before work and cast my ballot. I didn’t hear any reports during the day but before I went I was discouraged based on what all the reports up to that time were telling me that HRC was going to be the next president.
When I arrived home I turned on the television expecting to hear that it was all over and that our country had elected its first female president. And that, to me, was a dismal and depressing thought. Not because I was against a woman for president any more than I had been against an African American for president eight years earlier. It was a dismal and depressing thought because of the character flaws I saw in Hillary Rodham Clinton, and even more dismal and depressing because so many of my fellow Americans seemed to be so oblivious to the flawed character of the woman.
Before you get carried away with a litany of flaws in Donald Trump, in particular, the accusations of sexual predator, I want to remind you that the only verifiable accusation was in the Hollywood Tonight hot mic conversation with the show’s host. And might I also remind you that the only “character” flaws in those accusations were of a nature that hardly rose to the level of HRC’s malfeasance in office and corruption that was becoming more and more evident every day.
But that isn’t my main concern here, or to my intended point. I suggest that for a real and definitive understanding of the basis for my political point of view, you start by looking at the demonstrations that have been occurring around the country since the election. I have watched the interviews of demonstrators and what I am left with is an image of ignorant and self-centered mobs of people who are the result of two-plus generations that have been educated by a largely socialistic education system. They have no clue to what our history really is.
The history (when taught) they have been fed is one of a cruel and unjust people who have acquired what they have by taking it from others. The reason the people who feed that line to poorly educated, morally void “young skulls full of mush” is due their own failure to take advantage of what has been laid before them. They have devoted their lives to telling others how they think the world should be rather than how it is. In other words, the education system in our country has been taken over by a socialistic group known as the NEA … National Education Association. The NEA is nothing more than a labor union which unfortunately has actually become the most dangerous and the most powerful labor union in our country.
Regardless of what the NEA publicizes as their goal, the result is that now two, going on three, generations of people who have been fed a steady diet of what I call “non-responsibility.” In other words, whatever happens to you in life is never your fault. It is always the fault of someone else, generally the fault of people who expect you to eventually grow up and in rather crude but to the point words … grow a set.
Parents who have actually taken stock of what their children are being fed in school are the ones who are either home schooling their children or the reason that charter schools have become so popular in large segments of our society. It’s called taking control of your own life and as Granny would have said … “use your head for something besides a hat rack!”
The American people, as a whole, are a generous and compassionate people, but their generosity and compassion has reached its limits. The education system which has taught that the government is the arbiter of where that generosity and compassion should be applied has finally been exposed for what it is … the support system of a different kind of slavery. Slavery means that one group or segment of a society controls every aspect of the lives of another for the sole benefit of the slave owners.
When our own civil war ended, hundreds of thousands of slaves were suddenly freed to live and direct their own lives. What gets overlooked is the fact that thousands of them didn’t want to leave their bondage. They had never been taught and therefore had no idea how to cope for themselves; how to take responsibility for their own lives. Again in my opinion, the demonstrators marching in the streets of our cities are the result of all those years of the NEA indoctrinating our young people to the notion that they are not responsible for their own lives, and now they are afraid that Donald Trump is going to make them assume that responsibility.
The agitators are accomplishing what they want by an age-old tactic of repeating a lie often enough that it becomes the truth. In this case, the lies are that Donald Trump is a bigot, which he isn’t; a misogynist which he isn’t; a sexist, which he definitely isn’t. What he is, is a threat to the “plantation owners” and their overseers because he is telling the slaves “we are going to free you to pursue your own futures in the manner that you decide is best for you. And, we are going to do that by providing an environment free of the restraints of the past which have kept you down on the plantation.”
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote soon after the war of independence, and I paraphrase; “The great American experiment will last until a majority of the population realizes they can vote themselves an income from the national treasury.”
That is exactly what the “Plantation owners” have convinced the general population of. Last week the rest of the population stripped the “Plantation owners” of their power by using the basis of our constitutional foundation, the electoral college, to do so.
Thankfully, our founding fathers realized the dangers of pure democracy, which is nothing more than mob rule by ballot, and created a democratic representative republic.
As a result, the people who know how to work for a living, who want to work for a living, who want to direct their own lives, who want the government to do only what it was intended to do, which is to provide the safe environment for them to do so, and the people who are tired of things the way they have become … those people have spoken.

I have been posting about friends recently. No particular reason that I can point to really. It’s just that friends have been on my mind a lot recently. Is it a natural progression because I am now ankle deep in my seventies? I assume that has something to do with it, but there’s more.

People who live relatively normal lives because they are born with bodies that match their gender identity are fortunate. They generally don’t know the feeling of rejection by the people in their lives due to something beyond their control. Before you go off on a rant about having control over the issue, bear this in mind; we all have control over our actions but control over emotions is a different matter. Emotions have a life of their own, and those are what cause the most grief in the life of anyone who is born with a body that doesn’t match their emotional set.

When I finally came face to face with that unorthodox set of emotions, I also came face to face with friends, and family too, who couldn’t see beyond the appearance to the spirit behind the screen. I soon found myself faced with a sorting process. Sorting out the relationships, both new and old became a painful exercise.

I have old friends that I’ve known, literally all my life. Jeanie and I were born in the same hospital room in the Texas Panhandle in 1944. Roger I’ve known since I was 4 years old. Vince and Connie since I was 9. Denny and Candy since high school. These friends are people who have stuck with me through all the chaos of redefining my person.

Family on the other hand is an entirely different story. A sad story but true. The closer the relationship, it seems, the more difficult the process of coming to grips with who I have revealed myself to be. The 2 oldest children haven’t spoken to me since the publication of Dear Mom and Dad; each for their own reasons; misguided as I deem those reasons to be. One first cousin is understanding and accepting the other 2 have pretty much disapproved. My only brother and only sister have more or less, followed the lead of the 2 disapproving cousins. Again, each for their own reasons. So, what am I left with?

Friends! At the close of my last blog I quoted a little ditty that we used to sing at camp. “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver the other gold.” If I could convert all the silver and gold I have in friendships to hard currency I could retire and live comfortably for the rest of my life. The older I get the more precious that currency becomes, and it is never more evident than when I lose one of those gold coins like I did earlier this week.

I spoke of Daryll in a Facebook entry earlier this week. Tuesday morning, last week I awoke and reached for my phone, still pretty much in a stupor, to check the time. I inadvertently dialed his number. When I realized what I’d done I immediately canceled the call. Within a minute he called me back.
We hadn’t spoken in months. I hadn’t bugged him because I assumed he was getting on with life and building his fabricating business. Over the course of our 10-year friendship, Daryll had bailed me out of trouble, mostly vehicle trouble any number of times, always coming to my rescue with a tow or a battery or tires. He even set up an online parts business for me to run at one point.

We talked for the better part of a half hour and through the conversation I learned that his health wasn’t the best; that the Arizona heat was beginning to wear him down. He talked about closing up shop here and moving to Boise Idaho next year. But, I didn’t realize how bad his condition was until first thing in the morning, the day before yesterday, when once again my phone rang and it was his name on the caller id. But it wasn’t him. It was his wife.

“Georgia, it’s Vonda. Daryll passed away on Sunday. I need your help.”

It was like a bugler blowing reveille 6 inches from my ear. Death or the reality of impending death never comes gently to any door. That is a hard reality for anyone, especially for me to face. Up to the time Marilyn died, I had never, not one single time, lost anyone close to me. Daryll was not what I would classify as close, though we shared things that few understand. But he was a solid 24 carat gold friend and his death has shaken me to the core.

His death has brought home to me the very fragile nature of life and how easily it can be shattered. It’s only been a few weeks since a member of our church family suddenly and unexplainably lost her 12-year-old son. He just became ill and died one day.

These circumstances always remind us of that fact, but how often do we awake each morning and treat everyone in our sphere with the tenderness that we would if we knew that would be the last time we would ever be together? From my own experience, I would surmise that the answer to that question would be … never. But it should be “every time” shouldn’t it?

Who is sitting next to you right this minute, on the phone with you, right this minute, that you have given the slightest thought to the possibility that it might be the very last time? Would you be saying, thinking, feeling what you are at this moment if you knew it was the last moment?

At this point in history, the radio and television ads for precious metals and the importance possessing them are as numerous as the ads for beer, maybe more numerous. So how about the next time you see or hear one of those ads, why don’t you give some thought to the silver and gold people in your life and what you need to do to make sure they know that they are safe in your heart? And, never take their presence for granted.

There have been, in my past, and I suppose will be in my future, moments, events, things, happenings if you will, that go on my list of things to ask Abba when I am at last face to face with him. One of those “things” is going to be, “What were you thinking on April, 14^th 2007 when you woke me from an evening nap and suggested I go to the Cash Inn in Phoenix?

You see, what awaited me there was an introduction to someone I would have never in a million, no make that a billion years, have expected God to place in my life. She snuck up on me so to speak. Two friends invited me to join them at their table, which I did and we went through the usual “How you been? What’s up in your life?” banter. I don’t remember how many minutes passed that way but it couldn’t have been many. There was a tap on my left shoulder and when I turned to see who it was, thinking it must be another friend, I found myself looking into the green eyes of an adorable little blonde who asked, “And who are you?” And thus, it began.

As the evening progressed, the world shrunk to that small area the two of us, Christine Curtin and Georgia, occupied there next to the dance floor. Other than the Saturday nights when I would later be employed there at the Cash Inn, I have never stayed till closing … except that night. Several weeks later, the friend she had accompanied to the bar that night, told me that she thought she thought she was going to have to pry us apart when the bar closed. Needless to say, we exchanged phone numbers and promises to connect the next day.

At that moment, I was head over heels in love with whom I have come to refer to as “the little green-eyed blonde.” As it turned out that wasn’t the relationship which developed. I can say with clarity that what we have now didn’t develop overnight. It has taken most of the intervening nine years for that to happen.

In that time, we’ve learned a great deal about each other and we have gone through a period of drought in our relationship. In other words, we ceased communicating for nearly nine months over a misunderstanding that should have never occurred … but it did.

I’ve learned that, first and foremost, Christine is a loving, caring woman who puts family first then friends. She is a tough business woman who has built a thriving business virtually on her own. She hasn’t been without her own personal challenges. Her own battle with alcohol is one that she turned to for help when it had taken its final toll on her life. She is an overcomer if I ever knew one, and though it took a few starts and stops she has overcome the one thing that had the potential to bring her down.

She has done more to support me in my effort to promote “Dear Mom and Dad” than anyone else and for that support I am eternally grateful. That’s not the only support either. Thanksgiving weekend of 2007, I asked her if I ever made the decision to transition fully, would it make any difference in our relationship? Her response not only, “Of course not.” And then she added that if I made that decision she would go with wherever I needed to go and hold my hand for as long as I needed her. Nearly two years ago now, when I called and asked it the promise was still good, her response was simply, “Of course. When and where?”

I still don’t have a clue why God put this Little green-eyed blonde “atheist” in my life, considering what the difference in our spiritual lives is, but the fact is that she is here, and I believe she always will be. If I have learned nothing else from her it’s this: You don’t have to have a Christian belief to have a Christian heart.

I love you Christine Curtin. You are a friend I will always cherish. When I was a child I learned a little sing-song verse that goes like this: “Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other is gold.” You began as silver but have become solid 24 carat gold.