Headband Holder Craft

I saw this on Facebook friend's page & thought it was so easy and cheap,

and easily adaptable to hold other items that clutter up our drawers

 that I would post it for the creative gals in our family. 

  Two .97 cent squares of fabric from Walmart, two paper towel rolls, and a spool of ribbon. 

Hot glue the fabric to the rolls folding under the last side for a nice edge. 

Tuck the ends in the holes of the paper towels and glue as best you can. 

Hang the two rolls together with ribbon and then hang another ribbon for the handle.

I also like this craft, easily done with a needle & thread.  

My Health...

I've recently learned that my health is somewhat precarious.  The episodes which I thought were attributed to COPD, asthmatic episodes, have not all been asthma.  They are cardiac ischemic episodes.  They are getting more frequent, more intense.  

My mortality is becoming more real.  Time to get my affairs in order.  I am at peace.

I'm trying to take the meds prescribed recently as I have relented and began seeing a physician.  The meds make me too sick, so I stop, start them.  

The reason I don't like seeing a doctor is all they do is prescribe harmful drugs, which make me sick.  Is that what medicine has become?  Pill popping harmful drugs?  Do I have to feel like death not warmed over to allow the meds to take affect??? 

Leg and hand cramps, nausea, worse headaches than the ones I already live with, diarrhea, and a general feeling of feeling HORRIBLE?!  These are how I should feel taking meds to "protect my heart" and lower my BP, blood pressure??? 

I don't think I can hack it, honestly.  

Why can't they find ways to help me without killing me with medications???

The doctor chastised me, saying one of these nights 'you'll lie down and never wake up.'  

I responded, with all sincerity, 'From your mouth to G-d's ear.' 

Of course then he went into the govt authorized schpiel about worst case scenarios, 

living like a vegetable.  

I don't care about that.  

(With fibromyalgia, I am more concerned about living on bed sheets that burn my skin bc that's what happens if my skin comes into contact with certain fabrics and weaves.  THAT's what I care about!)

I've worked with some gems of people who lived with disabilities, and you never met people more in love with life, squeezing every drop out of every day they could!

While the "QUALITY OF LIFE POLICE" 

say we should sign medical directives TELLING "Health Care Providers" 

HOW MUCH care they should or should not provide us, 

in that worst case scenario that we end up like a disabled vegetable, 

I submit WHO MADE THEM god? 

I submit IDOLATRY has infiltrated medicine.  

Abortions, 

and now legal Euthanasia, 

where the patient TELLS the doctors to not give them the BEST care available.  

Hippocratic Oath be Damned!

People say how much the dying are suffering, and that it is only humane to expedite their death, to alleviate suffering.

I submit the side effects of the most popular painkiller administered,

MORPHINE, is the REAL PAIN.

Before I took my Mother into Vancouver, Washington Legacy Hospital at Salmon Creek, she did not have headache pain.  

One of the many physicians with whom I dealt with there admitted that SOME PEOPLE get seriously bad headaches from the morphine.

Further, in speaking to friends who have been under the influence of morphine for pain, I am told it does NOT ALLEVIATE YOUR PAIN, 

BUT it does NUMB YOUR BRAIN 

to where you're not in control of your mental faculties,

BUT YOU STILL FEEL PAIN!

So! NO MORPHINE for moi!

And NO INTUBATION either!

Intubation requires anethesia because it causes that much pain, 

so the patient is anesthetized to the point of BEING UNDER, out-like-a-light, AND...

not in control of their mental nor verbal capacities! 

How convenient, eh? Really?  THIS IS MEDICINE?

Surrendering your mental and verbal capacities to doctors and their drugs?

You know what this sounds like to me?

It sounds like the M.O., Method of Operating

that has been going on for decades where "Health Care Providers" 

(we no longer label them as 'doctors'--more about that another time)

have been medicating DISABLED CHILDREN to render them more MANAGEABLE for parents and public schools, with mind-altering drugs, aka psychotropics.  

It was so effective that they found they could do it to normal children, MOST ESPECIALLY LITTLE BOYS BEING LITTLE BOYS (oh! the horror, right? *rolling*my*eyes), but they had to come up with 'a means to this ends,' 

so they dreamed up, created disabilities 

like ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, etc.  

Mon Dieu, mon Dieu...

There are books written about these facts, so don't take my word for it.

Had I not started studying for a degree in pharmacology 

AND had this insatiable curiosity to LEARN, had a son on meds for his asthma, relatives on psychotropics, been on them myself (-the one good thing Larry Tavenner did for me--get me off those horrid meds which caused me paranoia, dependency, nightmares, hallucinations), and had access to a PDR and Facts and Comparisons (my bibles for meds), and then watched the ensuing medicating of disabled kids, disabled adults, the elderly, and subsequently watching the invention of so-called disabilities to be treated with these harmful drugs, I WOULD NEVER HAVE KNOWN, would never have CONNECTED THE DOTS, tying the medication of America to a RADICAL CHANGE IN MEDICINE.  

But I have watched, noted, over the years, dots that not only I can connect, but others can also.  Now that the average American, dumbed down in our public school systems, have been taught to UNLEARN, IOW, disqualify factual evidence if it comes from any source the establishment, that means the media, too, tells the public is a CONSERVATIVE, Christian, Republican, Tea Party type of source.  

UNLEARN.

I LIKE it!

It's accurate.

Any time a group of people is taught...brainwashed...to discount factual evidence because it comes from the hated RIGHT WING, conservatives, etc., that group of Americans has most effectively been taught to UNLEARN. 

Besides books in my personal library documenting 

THE ABUSE OF HARMFUL PHARMACEUTICALS by medical professionals,

I am waiting on this book from my public library:

Romancing opiates : pharmacological lies and the addiction bureaucracy /

      by Theodore Dalrymple. 

I'm seriously considering not using any more medications

and going, shall we say, ORGANIC, au natural.  

Hey, that's avant garde in some circles, n'est pas?

Seriously.

I would be happy to take all the drugs prescribed

IF I COULDN'T FEEL THEM EFFING with my body.

I'm very in tune with my body.  I put something into it, I monitor my body for differences, changes, in how it is feeling for up to 48 hours.  Seriously.  It's just habit with me now. 

Am I not the master of my body?

Am I not entitled to abort an unwanted child? It's MY BODY, right?

I love my children.

I love my grandchildren.

I pray for you daily.

But I'm not sure I can handle the outrageous side effects of prescribed drugs for my conditions.  

Years ago, in the 1980's, I threw out six Rx's from my internist, Dr. Ettlinger, for fibromyalgia, after they made me so sick, and manage the condition through diet.

Mid 1990's, when diagnosed with asthma--though I'd never had a symptom--I threw out six more Rx's from Dr. Andrade, after they made me too sick.

I now believe, I may actually have had UNDIAGNOSED early heart disease, which mimics asthma in that there is shortness of breath.  

Those were in the days when I had full, good medical coverage.  Now I am on Medicare, GOVT IN MY HEALTHCARE, and you can bet, if it's anything like what I've had, and anything like what our vets are experiencing at Veterans' Administration medical centers across this country, it ain't gonna be in my best health interests.  

So, my children, and my grandchildren, just pray for me.  I KNOW prayer, G-d, works in our lives, in our health, in our finances, in our relationships.  In the meantime, I will get busy getting physically active, strengthening my heart and other muscles, and I'll drop 25 pounds, somehow (I already eat well, just TOO well, LOL).  

I'll start going through pictures, posting them, commenting on them, and you get them posted onto your various photo-stashing websites, for posterity.  

I love you all, more than words can say.  And I miss you all, more than words can express.

Your Mama, Imah, Bubbe
Links>
  Mother, My Mother   
http://crankybubbe.blogspot.com/
http://crankybubbe.blogspot.com/p/my-current-reading.html

My Son and his sons

I love this picture of Giovanni and his second son, Alex Grimes!  

Alex, a couple years ago, and Giovanni- My boys, my nose, my ears, LOL! 

This is the only photo I have of Christopher Miller (Grimes).  He is now approximately 18.  MANY REGRETS, most of which were out of my control, but he is greatly missed, as are everyone of my estranged grandchildren,

who apparently care nothing for me. 

I am nothing to them. :*(

Yes, there is not a day that goes by that I do not cry, 

mourn the loss of my estranged grandchildren.  True.

Jayden & Giovanni on Jayden's 1st birthday. 

Looks like he's gonna have my big ears.  Got my baby blues, too, 

although Jayden's Mama says that is up to debate! 

She has baby blues, too ;D

Today, Father's Day, June 15th, 2014.

Words of a mother to her sons on this Father's Day 2014

Today is Father's Day in America.  (Links are in red font.)
I want to bless my sons, Farrell, Samuel, William III and his brother William, Jr., with the following Aaronic Blessing from these web pages: Aaronic Blessing 1 and Aaronic Blessing 2   
Learning is a biblical value.  It is as old as creation itself, long before secular man proclaimed it as the exclusive inheritance of elitists.  
I pray you love learning about G-d, His Teachings, His Creation, His Ways, His LOVE FOR YOU, and how to love Him through loving one another, with all diligence and passion.  
It is our legacy my sons.  Claim it!  

                                           Aaronic Blessing 

   By Rabbi Michael Short

Part One

William III turned me towards the biblical teacher, Pastor Arnold Murray, of blessed memory, whose teachings are readily available on tv on the SCN, Shepherds Chapel Network, and online at Shepherds Chapel Network where you can download his audio teachings onto your smartphones.  
There is so much false teaching going on today.  Pastor Murray is the closest to honest teaching I can find and I ask you to learn from Him.  
Thank you Giovanni for being open to G-d's guidance in allowing Him to guide you to this man of G-d, and for guiding me to Pastor Murray, a man whose learning surpasses mine, excepting his Hebrew pronunciation.  But he is very learned about the complexities, nuances, and Hebrew root words of the biblical language nonetheless.  
I love how he affirms that Jesus did not quote the so-called New Testament because it did not exist.  Jesus was indeed very learned, but in the TORAH.  The Torah had been replaced with the teachings of religious men, with what Pastor Murray calls "traditions of men," to put it nicely. Jesus pushed back on those false teachings, teaching directly from the Torah, and is the major reason he was so hated by the religious leaders of that day.  
His battles were not with the Romans who were "occupying" "HaEretz", "The Land", but with his own religious leaders who were perverting the word of HaShem.  
And he was one very angry man about it.  Today, the political left would call Jesus "an angry White man."  
Which brings me to another issue going on in America, the "War on Men (specifically White Men) and Boys."  I heard a female caller into Dennis Prager's radio program call in about something her husband said about a tv show they watched where the father was always the bumbler, the ineffectual one in the family and the mother could do no wrong.  This caller said her husband wanted their family to stop watching this tv show because of its negativity towards fathers, its undermining of fathers and men in general.  Dennis asked her was her husband correct.  She said once she viewed the show through her husband's eyes, he was absolutely right!  
My sons, the Torah stipulates that we become what we view, hear, and think.  Jesus said to GUARD our eyes, our ears, our thoughts.  
Download free, to your smartphone Dennis Prager Show . 
Listen to Dr. Laura.  Dr. Laura Schlessinger 
I personally attribute her with the saving of thousands of children by saving the marriages of their parents.  The harm done to our children by the public schools, by the government programs and interventions, interference into the home life, the family, the de-authorization of fathers and parents, is historic, and monumental.  
YOU CAN STOP THIS INJUSTICE on our parents and families, on our children, by so-called do-gooders!!
Had I known of Dr. Laura, had my mind filled with her biblical mindset, from a young age, I would most certainly have chosen proper and good mates to be my husband, and the father of my children.  
In my family, as well as Mormonism and certain sects of Judaism, (to quote Golda in Fiddler on The Roof) "a husband isn't to look at!  A husband is to get!" Well, that doesn't always work out well if your husband physically abuses you.  G-d does NOT expect us to stay in life threatening marriages, does he?
If you want to break the cycle we have been thrust into by a religion that upholds evil men, then it is imperative that you  listen to Dr. Laura, and have your children inundate their minds with the bible, Torah, as Jesus taught it, with people like Dennis Prager, and Dr. Laura.  and Pastor Murray. 
A father's love for his daughters is imperative.  We understand how important that love is to his sons, but, take my word for it, it is equally important to his daughters!!  Father's LOVE YOUR SONS AND YOUR DAUGHTERS.  Protect them from men with the wrong motives. Vet those men interested in your daughters.  Make a list of the requirements a prospective husband for your daughters must have before you will give your PERMISSION and bless their union.  Once that is accomplished, in a heart to heart with the prospect, let him know YOU WILL hold him accountable for her.  
Fathers, you must teach your daughters while they are yet young, how they should be treated by men, by how you treat their mother, with respect, and tenderness.  I think the two greatest attributes a man can give his children are showing their mother respect and sweet tenderness.   
"NOW, PLEASE, GO DO THE RIGHT THING!"

Bobby Goldsboro - Honey

This is for you Missy.  The song I wanted to name you after, but pressure from family kept me from giving you the name of a song I dearly loved.  



Since Farrell was a blonde, blue-eyed cutie, what was not to think you wouldn't be also, my honey-haired little baby girl?  And you were!  



This is a romantic song of true love, and Bobby Goldsboro sings it beautifully, poignantly. 



Juliet, You'll always be Imah's "Honey" #1!  Happy late birthday Honey! 

I love you! 

In my ADD meanderings around the world wide web today, somehow one of the places I ended up was searching for people & places associated with the place my siblings and I agree was our favorite growing up place, our farmhouse outside of Sherwood, Oregon.  

I doubt it was Mom's however.  While there I was in the hospital twice, once with life-threatening rheumatic fever, and Oliver was born, with life-threatening pulmonary problems.  While still an infant, Mom had to rush him into some emergency hospital for an emergency tracheotomy.  Recall Mom had all six of us kids when she was 25 years old.  Between two sickies and an a husband with alcohol & adultery issues, she didn't have a great life.  Dad was chinchy with the money, too.  You ever read Erma Bombeck's piece on “When God Created Mothers"? (click on the link) Our Mom fit this scenario all too much.  I recall when she fed the eight of us on a pound of hamburger.  

Because our household was in such stress with aforementioned sick chilluns, Dad's active alcoholism, we kids reacted like what kids do when a household is under such duress.  Our house was a tall box like structure...with white paint and dirt pathway on one side of the house.  Perfect! ...for...we mixed water into the dirt and have at it!!...plastering the white painted house with mud pies! What a MESS! Talk about a great stress reliever!  But all fun must come to an end.  When Mom got home, we heard the oft spoken threat "Just wait till your father gets home!!!!!!"  
Not sure what my siblings recall, but if Dad ever whooped us, I don't recall him doing it often, nor were his spankings particularly hard. 

 There was such "awe" and respect for fathers in our days, in our culture, that just to have Dad mad at us was painful enough, at least for me.  I don't know if any of us got spankings.  Not sure Dad came home from the bar before our bedtime.  Poor Mom.  How I wish she had known a personal relationship with G-d during those difficult days for her, for Dad, too.  At least now Mom is receiving her reward and is with our Father in Paradise.  

Dad surely suffered, too.  Torturing a wife who loved him dearly surely had to weigh on his conscience.  Two deathly ill children.  There was probably economic stressors with Oly & I racking up huge hospital bills that weighed on Dad, too.  

Alcoholism is like drug addiction, whether they be street drugs or legal mind-altering prescription drugs or pot in that they are a desperate, albeit, selfish attempt to relieve oneself of emotional pain one cannot see another way to do so.  Once I myself learned that my heart, according to The Father in His Word, is deceitful, above all things, and that emotions were not to be trusted, but were to be DISCIPLINED, I set about to relearn how to deal with stresses which were not always under my direct control.  I also learned to "compartmentalize" problems.  I knew from The Psalms that talking to The Father, pouring out my heart...oops...soul, as did Hannah in the Book of Samuel, and as did David in The Psalms, as did Esther, Moses, and others, was one way of dealing with stress, drug free, too :D

Over the years I constantly battle with emotional eating, a learned skill from my growing up years in the LDS faith.  Even in Judaism, food is used as an emotional coping device.  Fortunately, the congregation we ended up attending in Bremerton Washington, Beth HaTikvah, nearly everyone was on a health eating kick.  We'd also experienced this at our Tacoma congregation. Still, I struggle with disciplining this area of my life, to this day.  Paul helps.  He saw me take butter out of the fridge for my baked yam & expressed concern.  I'm too bullheaded, stubborn, offering my explanation "Well, it's better than eating all those chemicals mixed in with butter in your 'I Can't Believe It's Not Butter'."  We are both correct.  I guess I coulda alleviated some of his stress about my health by mentioning that while he was gone, I started eating my potatoes without anything on them.  I'll do that tomorrow.  He worries so about me that it's not fair to cause him more worry than I do. 

My health is not the worst, not the best. I've tried to regulate my health with diet, water, but not exercise.  I've started exercising moderately because I don't want to take Rx's.  Went to the doctor on the 1st.  In fifteen years I can count on one hand the number of times I've been to the doctor.  The govt regulates medicine to the point doctors have become drug pushers.  If people knew what I know about meds, they'd be fearful too of taking them.

The bad news is that now that Paully knows I've been to a doctor, rec'd Rx for the 160/100 blood pressure, today he made me go to the car to get the Rx and take it in his presence.  How can I buck him after all he's done for me???
He only means me well.  He also told me not to give Dr. Grudzien a hard time.  "Too late for that honey."  I am bad.  I think it's funny....but it's not.  

Before I told Dr. Grudzien on Thursday that I'd been given a D.O. by My Love, not to give the doctor a hard time, he knew from my three previous visits, that I was definitely going to argue and counter everything he said, so he just sat looking at all my test data (ekg, blood work, blood pressure, etc.)...just sat looking at it, not saying anything, just having a look of consternation on his face, probably wondering how was he ever going to impress upon me the seriousness of my symptoms.  We did get into an argument early in the visit, about the side effects of Losartin.  In fact, he learned forward over his desk to get "in my face' as it were, to stop me from my arguing.  He's a very tall, medium built man, imposing in stature.  After that argument, with his office door open, and I'm sure everyone heard us, he just got quiet.  

I realized I was being stubborn, again, and acquiesced, telling him My Love gave me the D.O. to obey the doctor's instructions. He gave me THREE MORE RX's! to 'protect your heart,' including nitroglycerin. G-d bless my kidney and liver PLEASE.  These are the hardest hit organs of prescriptive medicines and the reason kidney dialysis is epidemic!!!  ARGH@#$%&*(%^!!!

What I have I gotten myself into?! But I couldn't keep keeping the truth from Paul that I'd finally procured a doctor.  It would hurt him.  

I told him long ago he needs to get rid of his Mormon doctor because they don't think for themselves.  If govt tells them poison is good for their patients, they'll obey govt.  He needs to get a free thinking, older doctor, like me.  Mine is foreign born & trained!  American medicine...blech!...with apologies to Drs. Rubenstein, Garvin, and Bernstein, of our former congregation, all good doctors.  I did go to Dr. Garvin.  He was the nearest my age.  Older doctors aren't as indoctrinated as the younger ones, and being Jewish, they don't give up the G-d given ability and right to THINK CRITICALLY.

Wow!  This blog was to be about my growing up years in Sherwood, Oregon, on "The Farm!"

Here is a little taste of what is to come:

Being the oldest of six kids, and 12 years old when we moved back to Ashland, Oregon in 1960, information on our years living in the farmhouse across the dirt road from the Stahlneckers has been hard to come by.  

I used to, sometimes, when not in the hospital with rheumatic fever, get up early before school, and after school, help Jimmy Stahlnecker milk their cows by machine.  I recall an older gentleman in the Stahlnecker household who would pay us for crawdads we caught in the creek, opposite direction of the Jost's.  I don't recall ever being in the Stahlnecker home, though we did buy our milk from them.  I barely recall Phyllis as she was older.  Jimmy was too, maybe a year older?  I graduated 1966, Ashland Senior HS, Ashland, Oregon.  I'm told our house across from the Stahlneckers was used as a barn & eventually razed.  We had 20 acres, mostly fir trees.  My dad was not a farmer.  He was a "floor layer."  

I recall Jerry Jost, and the Snyder family who lived further up the road.  Delmer Snyder was "understood" to be my boyfriend for awhile.  When I find it, I'll post a fifth grade class picture with both of us in it.  

My siblings old enough to recall our very few years "on the farm" all agree, it was the best place of our growing up years.   We loved being able to walk barefoot on the dirt road down to the creek, play in the old hay in our barn that no longer housed animals, and we even found a swamp with stinky skunk cabbage where we pretended to fish with stick poles, safety pins, and worms.  It was quite a ways beyond the creek where we caught crawdads.  

Our place also had an old, unused chicken coop, smoke house, and well house.  Our farmhouse originally did not have a connecting bathroom.  One had to go outside via a two-sided wrap around, open porch,  either through a kitchen door or a door that led to a foyer to our upstairs.   Dad made quick work of chainsawing a door from the walk-in-kitchen-pantry into the adjacent bathroom, much to our relief.  

Since I was only 8 or 9 years old at the time, my younger siblings always wanted big sister to escort them to the bathroom at night before bedtime.  I loved that old farm.  We all did.  Too bad Dad wasn't a farmer.

Oh, the Stahlneckers also had sheep, but  I don't recall Jimmy & I doing anything with them.  He called them stupid, I believe.  After school, we would change into grubbies and head out to find where the cows were & herd them into the barn, into the stocks, and Jimmy would feed them hay, and we would set about milking them.  I enjoyed his company as he was a quiet fella, and I appreciated his allowing me to tag along on his errands.  I was very quiet, too, and that's probably why I don't recall any conversations between us.  
In those days, there were very definite divisions between the sexes, and how one aught to behave around the opposite sex.  My parents were very protective of us, especially me because I was pretty, quiet, and physically weak, so they must have trusted Jimmy implicitly, to allow me to tag along with him out into the pastures away from our parents.  Those were good times.  Stahlneckers were good people.  
I still enjoy the smells of cow manure, pastures, barns.  Good times indeed.  

That's all of that for now because I just remembered something more important!  This week was Giovanni & Desiree's birthdays and I need to do something on here for each of them.  

"Oy vey! I'm losing my head! and one of these days a horse is going to come along and KICK IT IN THE MUD and then it's goodbye Yenta"!  Yenta in Fiddler On The Roof :) Yenta The Matchmaker in Fiddler On The Roof (another link) (May all my precious bubeleh's have "matches" made in heaven!)

So! Gio! ...how much of this movie can you still recite, verbatim?  Of course you'll no longer be able to sing the "Matchmaker Song" in your pre-pubescent high pitched voice, hee hee!! 

Tonight's Sky Main Page

Tonight's Sky Main Page

2014 January - Monarch Butterfly Preserve

Camino Real Park Monarch Butterfly Grove, Ventura, Calif. Jan. 12, 2014

Santana featuring Mana - Corazon Espinado

Another Song I listen to BY THE HOURS....Giovanni's father, Sonny Grimes had a collection of albums & eight tracks that included Santana.  They weren't really my thing, but I just love this song, especially on the ipod Dvorah gave to me for Chanukkah...what year was that Boushka?  It has great bass tones,  & I & I LOVE bass sounds, especially with the $10 pair of earpieces I use.  MUCH better than the quality here on YouTube...hm...I wonder if there's a place to plug my earpiece into this here laptop???....Dvooooor-uh!

Fernando Lima & Sarah Brightman Pasión en TV de Noche

Thank you to my batya, Dvorah-Yael, for introducing me to Sarah Brightman, but I LIKE Fernando Lima, too!  I think his voice is really what creates the transcendence to a heavenly mood in the song.  Ooh-la-la, yes?

Sarah Brightman feat Fernando Lima - Pasion (Lyrics)

Another song I listen to by the hour, because this is exactly how My Precious, My Love, My Paully makes me feel.  We have such good & beautiful times together.  He's so sweet, so kind, so patient, so understanding, very loving, and always brings smiles to my heart. Baruch HaShem, Paully & I are so blessed.  I am tone deaf, so after my son Farrell started at a young age offering to "Pay you a quarter not to sing Mama" just as a joke of course, because my sister Grace had already told me as teens that I was singing off key, so I don't sing around anyone, unless I want to annoy someone...Like Dvorah... who just fled out of her room in a panic to the laundry room where I was doing laundry, and she anxiously asked was I ok.  I said yes, why?  "OMG! I thought you were hurt & crying out for help in here!!!!!"  I was singing along to Marvin Gaye's "Got To Give It Up!"  So I sing in privacy of my car & home.  (Nice to know she cares that much though...never seen her so...panicky!)

My birthday card from my sweet, kind, gentle, loving Paully, 2013.

I have all my cards from Paully displayed in the Beasty Girl 

so I can see them all the time when I'm driving in my car.

He's My Dear Heart, The One.  

It took us 63 & 64 years respectively, for G-d to bring us together, 

but we KNOW, 

that "With G-d, ALL things ARE Possible" that are in His Will.

Thank You G-d for bringing us together.

May we always remember 

Your Many Tender Loving Kindnesses to us 

and love each other as You have Loved us.

KENNY & THE HINSON FAMILY - THE LIGHTHOUSE LIVE

Another song I can listen to BY THE HOURS.  Just ask Dvorah-Yael.  

Celtic Woman - Galway Bay

Are there words to describe such beauty?  Listen to the poetry of this song.

Don Williams On Stage 1989

Well, I can go to sleep now.  My Sweetness, the kindest, gentlest man I've ever known has called his "Bay-beeee!" and whispered sweet kindnesses and lovies into my ears and my heart, though I am dearly missing him, I shall go to sleep wrapped in his love, cuddled up with his sweatshirt.  Goodnight My Sweet Love.

DON WILLIAMS - SOME BROKEN HEARTS NEVER MIND

This one is much better.  Missing My Precious Paully.  Daddy will be home soon, singing this and many other songs to me. <3 <3  <3  My Love For You Will Never Die Paully Baby Honey Daddy...

Don Williams - Some broken hearts never mend 1982

I love it when My Precious Paully sings Don Williams' songs to me.

Dwight Yoakam performs a medley of hits at the Grand Ole Opry

When my "Daddy" is away & I get lonesome for him, I like to play a favorite singer of his, Dwight Yoakam because it reminds me whenever we drive around, he plays Dwight's CD's and sings me these songs.  "My Precious Paully (Bolin)."  He'll be back soon, and we'll be driving somewhere & he'll be singing Dwight's songs or maybe my favorite, Don William's songs, to me.  He's soooo romantic...my sweet blue-eyed, Swedish, Stoplight Bandit.  "God speed your love to me..." That's from "Our Song" Unchained Melody by The Righteous Brothers.  G-d Speed Honey.  I love you.

Red River Valley/Tumbling Tumbleweeds

As a child, attending Sherwood Elementary in Sherwood, Oregon, Red River Valley is one of the many songs I loved & would request we sing during music classes.

Slim Whitman - I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen (with lyrics)

This song has great meaning to me because Mama said she named me after it.  If you can imagine a married, pregnant 15 year old young woman who would be separated from my father and go with another man within the nine months until I was born, divorced and remarried at 16 years old, maybe she was a little melancholy during such a turbulent time.  I never heard the song sang until I was 31, at a community organizer's conference in San Diego, CA.  One evening we had a kumsitz where a Catholic priest sang us songs on his guitar, and he sang this song.  I was overcome with emotion.  I've never heard it sung as poignantly as that priest sang it that evening.  It gave me a whole new perspective on the very young woman who mothered me, a whole new appreciation of what it must have been like back in 1948 to be married, pregnant at 15, separated and birthed a baby girl at 16, then quickly divorced and married by the time I was 2 months old.  Mama joined the church of her new husband, LDS, and faithfully raised us in it.  She taught herself to cook from scratch and to can food, clean a house proper, sew some of our clothes, teach us how to be quiet during church services & to have manners, how to comport ourselves in public, and played children's games with us, let us make tents with sheets or blankets thrown over the dining table, taught me how to sew with a needle & thread when I was seven, then taught me embroidery when I was eight, after I'd had Rheumatic Fever, which would be the first of three episodes, though the one time the doctor thought it was Scarlet Fever, later decided it was Rheumatic Fever again.  If that weren't enough, Mama had 6 babies in 9 years, just before I was 10, and due for my 2nd bout with the fever, whilst Mama had Oliver whom she wasn't even able to bring home from the hospital.  He was born sickly and grew up with severe, life threatening allergies and lung disease, asthma.  He died almost a year ago.  And if that weren't enough, Dad, an active Mormon, was an alchoholic, with a very high IQ-which means he could be awfully cruel to Mama, & he had more than one demon to deal with, and Mama got the brunt of it from him.   How she ever maintained as long as she did is a tribute to her G-d given inner strength, but she did break, and The Church was never any real help to her because back then, The Church believed that if you attended half of all their church meetings, lived a pure life, paid your tithes, didn't cuss, drink or smoke, you just wouldn't have any real life problems.  The Church was in denial, you might say, and they pushed these unfortunate women under the rug and to the nearest clinic where they were prescribes powerful mind-altering, addictive drugs to kind of sedate, depress, their moods and feelings.  This is still the normative practice and I have strong feelings against it, having witnessed first hand the side effects of such powerful drugs that big pharmaceutical companies and a derelict FDA still refuse to acknowledge are as prevalent as they are among the patients using the drugs.  It's a scandal that gets exposed and just as quickly the govt FDA and big pharma get the truth about such powerful, harmful, dangerous drugs kaboshed.  The Church still believes in the sovereignty of medicine and so they still send unfortunate women, and a few men surely, to go to doctors who will prescribe such harmful drugs.  In the believing Christian churches one can find anointed men and women gifted by G-d with the gift of healing and such as find these healers never have to suffer as do LDS women.  Mormon men believe they have the priesthood of God, but they don't seem adequate to the task of healing their families, but their god was once a man, so perhaps, their lack of knowledge of the true G-d of Avraham, Yaakov & Yitzhak, does not afford them with the powers they think they possess?  I don't know why that would matter though.  G-d is not a respecter of persons and none of us actually truly knows or understands Him because we can't, nor can our spiritual leaders because the bible, the Torah tells us so.  But our minds in our own minds tells us our minds are higher than our minds actually are...we lack a humility in this our natural man.  The Church, as the LDS calls themselves, is definitely lacking something in this area where they lean to man's knowledge, above the powers of healing G-d grants to some.  They are all about "family" but family must conform to their "ideal" without the flaws and imperfections that were present, and still are present within my family.  While one side of this philosophy is very good in that it subscribes to G-d's commands for us to be holy as He is holy, G-d Himself, by virtue of the ordinances of the sacrifices once prescribed, affirms to us that we indeed are not holy.  But we believe G-d did not err, but that His Ways, His Thoughts are not ours, no matter how much we attempt to elevate ourselves in our own mind's eye.  He is a bit more complicated than we can know.  Yet, we know we are His dearly beloved, imperfect, but beloved children.  Sometimes for one reason or another My Precious Paully will treat me less than respectful and since I am spoiled by his treatment of me, this is very hurtful to me, and I will humbly, quietly, but confidently, remind him that I am a daughter of The King, and he might want to be more his considerate self to me.  Of course I must ask myself too, if I have done something to hurt my dear sweet precious Paully as it is not his habit to be unkind to me.  I am the one who is unkind to him at times, and I'll feel so badly for being that way to him when he doesn't deserve such treatment & after all he has done for me through his love for me.  After all, he is a son of The King, and my covering, responsible to G-d for me, and therefore, I must treat him with absolute respect, too, which is easy to do with such a kindly, gentle, patient, understanding, loving man of G-d.  On the other hand, I struggle with selfishness/meanness & have to remind myself of the great Love G-d has for me, all that He has done for me, and that He has given me with such a great, yet wholly unassuming, humble, highly intelligent, man as My Love.
I've been truly blessed, and hearing this song, I just wish Mama could have been taken back home by a man who would have loved her like Paully loves me.  Mama did well, and now, she is "home," with our G-d, our King, in His Loving Care, and happier than she's ever been.  Reminds me of that other beautiful song by Celtic Woman "Galway Bay" and the line..."I will ask my G-d to let me make my heaven in that dear land across the Irish Sea..."  I will post the video next of that enchanting song.  It's one I listen to for hours at a time.  Then again, there are many such songs, because like Mama, and like little Bunny-Belinda, and like My Precious Paully, we do LOVE good music, yessiree, we do.

Fiddler on the roof - Tradition ( with subtitles )

Purim Animated

This is a partial tribute to my mother, to her legacy and to what I have done with it and to enlarge it, to pass it on to my children and grandchildren, to enlarge upon in their own individual lives.  

FYI: some of the links on here in BLUE go to YouTube recordings of the music I love.  

My mother, Winnifred Harriet Hines Hartson Hamblin was born on December  2, 1931 and passed away on Sunday, January  8, 2012.

She mothered six of us children.  Winnie was the youngest of six girls, born & raised in Idaho Falls, Idaho.  She left home and school while in her teens and went to live with her sisters, Grace & Dolly in the Greater Portland, Oregon area, where she met my father, Navy soldier Eugene"Jerry" Austin Hartson.  They married in 1947.  Winnie had to get permission to marry, being 15 years old.  

In 1948 she gave birth to Kathleen Hartson, divorced Jerry, and married John Jacob Hamblin.  She converted to his religion, LDS, and they moved to Medford, Oregon where she gave birth to Grace Hamblin in 1949 and John Jr. in 1951.  She & Jack then moved to Ashland, Oregon where she had two more children, Fred & Laurie.  In 1956 my folks moved to Portland, Lake Grove and Sherwood, Oregon where we kids attended Sherwood Elementary.  The youngest of us, Oliver, of blessed memory, was born at the same hospital as I was, nine years earlier, Emmanuel, in Portland.  We moved back to Ashland in 1960.  

Mother taught herself to cook and can and sew.  I asked her how she was able to teach herself so much and she said she read the patterns and cookbooks and she just taught herself.  

She made us many clothes, including some beautiful dresses when we reached our teen years before we started sewing a few of our own clothes.  I hope to find the photos I have "somewhere" and post them.  
Mother taught us homemaking and we were well blessed in the skills of homemaking which we took with us to raise our families.

Mother never felt she was very smart as she only completed an 8th grade education. However, her penmanship was perfect, as were her spelling, sentence & paragraph structure & writing skills.  The basics of an 8th grade education was better in the 1940's than it is now, and for some decades since, depending on where one lives.  Mom was actually quite smart, but that was not a value held by our church for women, and definitely not a value held by the Hamblin men, who are predisposed to alcoholism & less than honorable treatment towards women.  We all have our flaws, so I don't want to make them out as totally bad, so let's just say, they need improvement, a lot, in this area. 

Mom loved Dad, Jack, very much.  He had his demons and did not honor his vows but that is something G-d will have to deal with and we needn't concern ourselves with this except to say to my children and their children, that the Hamblin men should be avoided.  Then again, so should the Tavenner men, for similar reasons.  'Nuff said.  
Mom was not one to harbor grievances for long and she forgave Dad and she moved on, seeing how he would never change. I think if she'd known how to affect him in positive ways without his negatively affecting her to the degree that he did, things may have turned out better, but Jack Hamblin had a very high IQ and Mom simply was not equipped to deal with that IQ being used in evil ways. I'm sure they both did the best they could with the knowledge & skills available to them at that time & place in their lives.  Our job is to learn from others' mistakes, in order to avoid some of our own.  And to remember the good they did in our lives.  We all have negatives we've experienced and learned from our parents.  What we do with them is entirely up to us!  

I've good memories of Dad, too.  How he encouraged us to learn new vocabulary words on a regular basis.  How he was protective of us, as good dads should always be.  How he cared for me when I was extremely ill with rheumatic fever, twice and hepatitis, all before I was 11.  Mom was busy with me and all those six babies she had in nine years, and especially the last baby, Oliver, who was born with lung problems, and who nearly died while an infant because of these health problems. She had to rush him 25 miles into Portland for an emergency tracheotomy while he was still an infant.  Dad was at work, out on the job, which meant no phone on the job site.  

Mother LOVED music.  She exposed us kids while growing in our formative years, to so many kinds of music, from popular, classical, country and cultural music to children's music.  I recall her turning up the radio when the Platters sang their hit "When Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," and Marty Robbins' his "El Paso."  

Bizet's Carmen, (I have the dvd) 

 of the exquisite opera singer Julia Migenes-Johnson and Placido Domingo (whom my mother first made me of aware of him, and the other two great tenors, Pavarotti and mother's favorite Carreras.   

  The Three Tenors 1994 in Los Angeles Dodger Stadium   

 Jose Carreras,  Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti with world reknown Zubin Mehta.

She bought us a set of children's records, 33 1/3 rpms, from a grocery store, of which, somewhere in my packed things, I still have a couple of the albums.  And another set of albums purchased from a grocery store of classical music.  I also have some of those.  I heard & loved the great works by Tchaikovsky,   Rachmanifoff,  Prokofiev's "Peter and The Wolf"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGixA8iYOW8, 

Bizet's Carmen, (I have the dvd)
Dukas' "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" , 
Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade", 
Igor Stravinsky's "The Firebird Suite", and sooo many others.  

Mom read to us, taught us nursery rhymes and finger plays.  I recall when we still living on Orange Street in Ashland, Mom reading us bible stories from the Torah, edited I'm sure, for youthful ears.  She read to us of Daniel in the lions den, Shadrach, Meschack & Abedneggo, straight out of the bible, not from children's bible story books.  I have that image of us kids sitting on the floor at her feet while she sat in a rocking chair & read to us.  That's a powerful image to retain in a child's mind, still there in my mind's eye some nearly 60 years later. Think about the images you create in your children's minds, carefully.  There is a reason Jesus & other religious sages tell us to guard what images, sounds and other sensory stimulation we allow into our minds.  Mother tried to fill ours with spirituality, good reading, good music, good art, good conversation and good works.  

The LDS church is excellent, or used to be ( I left it in 1970), in teaching mothers and children useful skills that help them process and learn information.  Memorizing nursery rhymes leads to increasing the brain's capacity for learning, a fact the current, avant garde public education system has totally thrown out as outdated & obsolete, but which smart parents still use.  

Judaism is full of memorizing prayers & scriptures and they start when the babies are born.  Their children can recite, in Hebrew, the Sh'ma by the time they can talk in sentences.  
For two of my children, Farrell and Missy, that would have been before age 1, but we were Christian, so they only learned nursery rhymes & songs sang at church programs, such as "Primary," at very early ages.  What a waste of highly intelligent minds!  But I just did not know how intelligent I was, nor how intelligent are my children.  This blog is help them to know, what several highly intelligent people have told me, and I can tell my children and their children the same, you are way above average intelligence.  Don't waste it, please.  

A delightful scenario I enjoy remembering is Missy at age two when she attempted to use a BIG word, which would be the sign of a child enchanted with world of words, writing and art.  She came out of the bathroom with a big smile and proudly announced to me, "Mommy, I distincted up the bathroom."  She knew she had used a big word and was so proud of herself.  And I was impressed.  
Unfortunately, women being intelligent was not a part of my culture up to that point in my life, so I did not capitalize on it as I would come to do years later.  

I have many examples of Missy's artwork which I am remiss to add here, due to I don't know where the pictures are of them.  But I will post when I find them. Missy wrote fiction stories, writes prose & poetry, creates phenomenal works of crafted arts, the greatest one I have a picture of somewhere... :( It is a large wall hanging made of symmetrically placed seashells of various sorts, in a circular pattern with a mirror in the center.  A work of art that was clearly worth minimum $150.  I forgot what she said she did with it, but it is gone. (Oh L-rd please let me find all these pictures, and in good condition.)  

Farrell, Giovanni & Dvorah-Yael all have creative gifts.  I think they get them from my Mom. 

Gio at age 10 would draw on paper, and create with Lego's, ships and planes in exacting detail and perfectly symmetrical.  I recognized this above average intelligence and asked around, but I could not determine, not being very educated myself, what type of intelligence this showed.  Now I know it represents engineering intelligence and now I know he should have gone to MIT. Gio, at age 3, would ask spiritual questions that even our pastor was unable to answer, showing that early on he had an ability to think deeply in abstract, too.  He didn't get that from me...I don't think.  

Farrell could draw animals and was very gifted in the art of cartooning, lettering, and graphics.  He should have gone to the best graphics school.  I hope I have his artwork stashed away.  I hope, I hope, I hope!  When he was in second grade, in a govt program for disadvantaged kids, (which none of my three oldest kids should have been in because they not only did not learn anything, they regressed), and his teacher complained that he wasn't working to his potential.  Now we understand that is an issue of bad teaching and bad curriculum.  As a concerned parent, I brought it up at a doctor's appointment with our pediatrician, Dr. Joerns.  He said Farrell was particularly bright and was not being challenged at school, in lay terms, the 2nd grader was BORED. Already.  

Now we know, decades later, that the "War Against Men" had evolved into the "War Against Boys." This war still goes on, in the name of feminism and promoting female intelligence and opportunity.  The false belief here is that we must put down one sex in order to elevate the other sex.  One of many false beliefs among the Left, as well as some religious cults, both Christian and Jewish, but especially in the Christian community.  

My children: you come from very intelligent stock.  We are not inbred as they are in the Mormon and Hasidic communities, so as a legacy to my mother, and your mother, moi, and your bubbe, moi, learn the love of learning and do not allow yourself or anyone else to put limits on you. STRETCH yourselves. I know, from my experiences with Dvorah, that you kids can achieve anything you desire to achieve.  You simply need to be very focused, self-disciplined, and goal oriented.  I won't lie or even sugar coat achievement. It IS WORK.  

Dvorah, like Missy, had her own unique and "different" style of art, enchantingly eye appealing.  I do have examples & will post.  However, having gone the route of Judaism, adopting their values regarding learning (we already had the work ethic value), I encouraged her mental development however and not her artistic side.  Even so, she is a gifted fiction writer.  Currently, after two years of community college with honors, PTK, from Olympic College in Bremerton Washington, 

Dvorah is working on her career as The Next Dog Whisperer, and is working as a dog bather at a dog grooming shop. She gets her luvies in the form of doggie licks, aka kisses, and a few nips, lots of dog claw scratches, but she absolutely loves it.  

In the short 9.5 months we had Missy's daughter Belinda "Bunny" in our lives, it was clearly obvious this child LOVED MUSIC.  Having learned from my mother the importance of exposing children, EARLY, to music, and my experiences regarding Gio and Dvorah, I exposed Bunny to much music.  Thankfully when it was necessary to have her adopted, Missy wisely chose a college educated mother with a degree in....MUSIC! So I'm certain that talent from her father, Tommy, and from our side, is being fully developed. Baruch HaShem.  

The experience with Gio is this: There was a song by Jerry Butler, "Playing On You", which to this day, I still love!! that I played OCD, throughout the pregnancy with Gio.  His Abba, papa, "Sonny" William Henry Grimes, of blessed memory, neglected to tell me his blood type was AB & not compatible with mine.  So, at 24 hours, when the nurse brought G to me for nursing, I asked her if his color was kinda orange.  She took him immediately from me.  Turns out that Rh factor was causing him jaundice.  So we stayed an extra few days in the hospital while G was treated under ultraviolet light, five days total stay.  

We got him home finally and I was having Jerry Butler withdrawals, so you know the first thing I did was to put on the 45 rpm vinyl & play it.  Sonny had sat down in my rocking chair---the same one I used to rock Missy & Farrell in, one on each side of me, which chair is in the possession of Missy--

...and Sonny was holding Gio on his arm, with G upright, like when you're going to burp a baby.  I kid you not, at the moment I started my record playing on the phonograph, Gio---five days old--started moving his body up & down in rhythm to the music!!  His daddy made some wry funny remark about my possibly listening to that song a bit much.  Ya think? :) 

We were astounded!! So, daddys, talk to those babies, sing to them, read to them, while they are in the womb.  They do hear you.  Mommies already do this.  And play your babies the most uplifting, great music by great composers, as well as some popular, uplifting music. 

There's another story, which I've probably told already on here, but it underscores the importance of playing good music, showing good movies to kids.  I'd happened upon a VHS video of Walt Disney's cartoon feature of Peter and The Wolf.  IF you can ever get a hold of this video, GET IT! It's that valuable!  Dvorah had watched it so often I guess--I was working full time driving those inner city buses for Pierce Transit---that one day...

We were attending messianic services on Shabbat, so Sunday was my day to do EVERYTHING in the house before going back to work on Mondays.  It was the day I played classical music from Seattle radio station, KING Classic.  I must have been real focused because I didn't hear it until...

...all of sudden Dvorah, age 3, runs into the kitchen and with raised, excited voice starts telling me that is Peter & The Wolf playing on the radio!  But the next thing is what is amazing!  She began telling me in detail what was happening, as she had seen it in the video! "Ohhh, that bad Ivan (the cat) is hiding in the bushes, and he's going to pounce on Sasha ( a little bird)..."  I just stood there amazed at how this little girl was able to describe the scenes and events as we listened to the music coming from the radio.  Needless to say, I told Gio, her babysitter, to make sure she saw the video regularly, to ensure it was imprinted in her mind forever.  

We learn so many things using music that I wonder when the self-important education elites will start teaching using music.  Even the ABC's we teach our babies in song!  Just think of all the things we've learned and taught using music!

Memories as sung by Susan Erens in Homecoming with Andre Rieu.  

GOOD music of all kinds, self-learning, are some of the legacies our Mother, Grandmother, has left us.  I just want you kids to know where I got them from...so you'll know a little more about me, about her, about yourselves and what talents, gifts, and blessings you have inherited, so that you may be encouraged to make the most out of your lives, giving glory to G-d, and making me proud of you.  

I love you.  Go with G-d.  He loves you with an everlasting love.      

Dream big my children.  You never know..."It could happen." 3 yo Akim plays with Andre Rieu
Is he beautiful or what?!  

This little one is amazing.  And we think we are blessed!!  Blessed Little One

I love the self confidence of seven year old boys.  Here's one playing Rachmaninoff's "Flight of The Bumblebee."

Donna Summer - Last Dance

Donna Summer On The Radio. (1979) Original