Imagine you are minding your own life with all its attendant ambitions when the ambitions of science, and perhaps of a you ten years from now, butt in. Imagine that they have discovered that you are dying and in five years when you start feeling like it it will be too late to give you optimum chance at survival through a complex surgery, because the symptoms of your progressed disease will get in the way.
While seemingly more able than many, you are asked to go under anesthesia and give up your heart. Like, they will take it out and throw it away, although it just walked a daughter to a school bus stop, and trickertreated for two hours , or walked all the way to the water from the Strand last night, and back, and every time you go anywhere you walk to either Havenhurst and Van Owen or Victory and Balboa to catch a bus... today you sing while cleaning house...you wash the kids' faces and clothes and kiss them and open the homework and the beeper happens: time to let go of your heart..yeah, real smart.
Imagine laws pulling away your one shot at life, then zooming it almost back, then stretching it off in the distance again, making you pack, making you move to strange lands and leave children behind, come, go, haha, ah so.
Well, somewhere in cyber space, here in fact, it's told.
I took the window out of my banjo for you, so it could hold
DRAW ON THIS WEB SITE! The idea here is that you draw something--hint: don't use the skinniest pencil--and then save it. At any point you can click on "load" and see a list of drawings you or I or etc saved, and choose any one to see it. Then you can add to it even and save it with a new name., or just view them all.I say you have to draw, too!
My 15-year-old daughter has really worked on her web sites, all of it without my input. See the one she's putting her stories on now. RIGHT HERE.
June 2002--Weird Al's new CD includes "I'm a Genius in France" and is being recorded now
I wanted to say today July 1 2002 that Bernice Bowen blew it with me. In her trial last week she never once said she withheld Carr's identity to be able to be with Kayla right after Kayla saw Joey die. She only said she was scared of Carr.
She did give enough info on him that police rushed to his home 1 minute after he got there, time enough to arrest him and lock him up when they saw him parking on another street, carrying a loaded semi-automatic, stealing a bike from it's owner right in front of him and fleeing them when they yelled "Stop! Police!" Plus all the evidence in plain site in the apartment that the guy was flippy and a gun freek, incl. that picture of Denise with a big weapon on the wall.
And for the jury to say that in their decision they considered how huge and muscular Bernice is ("how could she claim to be abused? She didn't look meek and tiny to us") shows total stupidity since at the day of Hank's death Bernice was a slight little skinny girl. She got big in prison ! It isn't fair--Bernice's attorney, family, etc. were not privvy to the jury's false ideations as they examined facts, to correct their assumption that Bernice was big and heavy back when she ran with Boo.
Still Bernice blew it with me--I thought she was protecting her little girl in a confused way.
July 5, 2002
Ted Williams, I really wanted to have that visit with you .I am so sorry you have died and that will never happen now. God bless you. I have a Christmas card from you to my grandmother. Somewhere. I am afraid to throw anything out til I find it in this mess of unorganized old written/ printed things.On the news today they said you have to sell it fast, your memorbilia, while the iron is hot.
I know where all the signed baseballs come from. You used to buy your own and visit sick kids in hospitals and give them autographed baseballs you'd bought and signed. And you told the hospitals if they told about it you would stop.
So probably many autographed balls selling for big bucks today and this week came from those sick kids.
I know you didn't autograph much, including your letter to me: the autograph was wisely protected, not freely given. My Dad says you were fishing with my grandparents in Key Largo when your wife had a baby--your daughter--and your wife got so mad she chased you around the house with a knife. Strange isn't it the things I know?
OK they either gave Ted a plain napkin to sign saying the doc wanted an autograph or saying he probably was too drugged to sign bats that day and let's see how straight he could write on this napkin, or they didn't tell him what the stuff he was signing meant--body frozen upside down, etc. Because if Ted really wanted this and was so afraid he'd die before it was put in his will that he made a new will on a napkin in the hospital, well, then, after surviving the pacemaker operation, he had years to get it put in a real will, to make sure it was honored--and he never did change his will. He didn't , surely, want confusion and court cases caused by leaving his last wishes on a napkin and other directions in a will--he'd have put his changed intentions in a will after he survived the pacemaker operation so there'd be no chance he'd be cremated! Duh are we all stupid or what!!!
Our Christmas party, 2002. Mary, Elena, a nun, 2 folks, Deanne sing God's praises . The Focolare live a Bible verse every day all day, pertaining to loving others to the max.
This is more of our brothers and sisters in Christ. The idea is to love radically as Jesus showed us. Like when Judas came to betray him He looked Him in the eye and said "Do what you came to do." Instead of punching him out, or getting even.We are to love so much we give our life for the other. This does not mean die but die to our wants and wills to meet the needs of our loved ones, who are every human being we meet. Like, forgo the crowned molding and get the old man you met dentures so he can eat. Louie, far right, exemplifies this. She is so sweet that if you call her and say you are hungry she is there in 15 minutes with half the food in her house for you. Every time, she comes immediately. She has really wanted to and has reached the Christ in her.. God lets her work miracles. Our water was cut off and we had been using 15-year-old bedsheets that were so weak the elastic didn't hold onto the corners but flipped off at the slightest provocation, like if you sat or laid down on the bed. it was awful, waking constantly, or seeing your babies sleeping, on old dirty falling apart bare matresses. Then when the water went off we couldn't even wash the old sheets. Louie heard Marina needed bedsheets but she had no idea Marina slept with me in a queen bed. She called and said I have some sheets for Marina. She came right over with them and they were lucious new very white with sparkling rainbows across parts of them , and ironed. Immediately my bed transformed from an awful boring place with the same sheets on it it had when I nursed my babies to a magical attractive place to be. Weeks later it still made us so cheery and uplifted us so to be on that bed with those brightly colored and crisp white sheets, something new alone a cheerer upper in itself. But for Louie to be right on the mark with the right size? That echos Focolare founder Chiara Lubich's experience in the bombings of WW2 of a lady needing size 9 shoes and a lady coming in that moment with a bunch of size nine shoes to donate..
Louie is so good for us, she offered to take both girls to CCD and help make dure they make their first Communions, as we have no car. That is a HUGE commitment. She took Marina to Bible Summer School this summer (2003) and then told us the last day that she was having a mammogram and biopsy the next day. Yesterday, only 2 or 3 weeks later, she had a breast removed. Anyone reading , please pray for this dear little lady who grew up in the Phillipines poor.She is truly blessed with Godlyness and we love her so much.
If you have cable or satellite tv, turn to EWTN at 3 p.m. for just 15 minutes and listen to this lovely family sing a beautiful song while the lovliest art is shown, hundreds of pictures of stained glass, paintings, and statuary made by masters .It's called The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy. When you see how perfect the art depicting baby Jesus and other Christian themes is, you know that God gave these long ago artists a truely special gift; that art tells us so much beyond words. No other cause or celebrity has inspired so much perfect art. I can't help but envy Marionists.
After my current struggles I was wiped out,anxiety-ridden, scared to death.(My struggles are to pay property taxes of 4 years, repair a badly leaking roof, reduce my $400 a month electric bill 3/4ths by getting insulation and siding and updated wiring, living without water for 16 weeks now and facing October 2003 without electric or phone or water as I had to pay the back taxes on the house. I don't have an oven or stove anymore thanks to a lightning strike on a transformer by my home in July '01, as if this could be a crime to taake my kids for, and they dutifully have to come out, 3 grown men with good salaries peering into my clean , useless wall oven til you think they must be going to fix it for me, pull it out of the wall (I always needed a few men to do this so I could replace the fuse) but instead of fixing it, they are studying it to see how they can use it to take the kids from me, then they leave...then Animal Control comes out if I move the dog for 3 hours so I can have my house appraised--they were callled the first hour and told the dog was chained wthout shelter or food or water--I was only tying him there a few hours, he had tons of water and Animal Control asks that you don't feed pets outside as it attracts wild animals who might carry rabies-- Instead of coming to help us, they come to destroy, and we've done nothing to hurt them -while all this goes on I came to understand that God picked Mary for the mother of His son because she had the perfect mother love, which means she was able to love her offspring more than I love my own and I truly love my babies with all my heart--I came to see that she was humble, and that this is the most beautiful woman to God, so I strive to be as much like her as I can , so He will be pleased with me, too.I explain thi s here because I believe the love of Mary keeps a lot of non-Catholics from seeing with the right eyes and faith.But as soon as I gave up my despair and problems to jesus ( not Mary)I was ok, my anxiety dispersed, I was eating, and joking with my kids again, so even if we are all taken from each other in two days they will remember my calm and funny personality, not my freeked out , depressed one I nearly went to heaven or hell or wherever we go with this extreme stress.God gave me me back , if only a few days, that the kids might be happier , feel more secure, and trust in God. It began by my contemplating Mary, His mother.It does not mean I worship her unnaturally or against God's commands--it means I contemplated her herness and emptied me to be like her, to be Christ, to be an apostle of Christ like she was.
The Catholic Framework for Economic Life (CFEL)
1. The economy exists for the person, not the person for the economy.
2. All economic life should be shaped by moral principles. Economic choices and institutions must be judged by how they protect, or undermine the life and dignity of the human person, support the family, and serve the common good.
3. A fundamental moral measure of any economy is how the poor and vulnerable are faring.
4. All people have a right to life, and to secure the basic necessitites of life such as , food, clothing, shelter, education, health care, safe environment, and economic security .
5. All people have the right to economic iniative, to productive work, to just wages and benefits, decent working conditions, as well as to organize and join unions or other associations.
6.All people to the extent they are able have a corresponding duty to work, a responsibility to provide for the needs of their families, and an obligation to contribute to the broader society.
7. Society has a moral obligation, including government action where necessary, to assure opportunity, meet basic human needs, and pursue justice in economic life.
8. Workers, owners, managers, stockholders, and consumers ae moral agents in economic life. By our choices, initiative, creativity, and investment, we enhance or diminish economic opportunity, community life, and social justice.
9.The global economy has moral dimensions and human consequences. Decisions on investment, trade, aid, and developement should protect human life and promote human rights, especially for those most in need wherever they might live on this globe.
Do your actions, policies, programs, support The life and dignity of the human person? Support the family? Not if you are a Florida republican, a non-voter, or have stock in Tampa Electric Company! Did you know that our SSI laws in Florida greatly diminish the dignity of the human? You ,me when I made a decent living and paid no attention to the street folk, America, Florida, Governor Bush and croonies, only let me have Medicaid if I make $6,700 a year or less.My electric bill is $366 a month for the past 10 months , or $4,660, of my $6,500 annual income. There is NO WAY I can pay the water bill, phone bill, property taxes, or repair my leaking roof , let alone get the kids clothes as they grow, and then Crazy Old Patricia calls agencies that take children from bad homes , urging them to take my children, although she knows I have a year at most to live and am a good Mom who has never even left my kids to go on a date.
Not so , herself--she had a man she wasn't married to sleeping in her bed when her little girl was 15 six years ago, and --absurdly, considering the calls she makes on me like I am more immoral than she-- she let her 15-year-old's boyfriend live in her 15-year-olds' bed. So as she lived alone with her 15-year-old daughter, both were sleeping with men they were not married to. Patricia and her beau smoked pot in front of the teen regularly-- now, for the past 2 or 3 years, the teen's friends have been the mother's source of pot. Yet Patricia can anonymously place calls , knowing her own permissiveness can't come under a microscope, just her allegations about mine-- the lady is totally nuts.
My daughter has never dated, been out of the house alone with kids or teens,even hung out with teens , unfortunately, because the poverty just goes too deep. For example her friends want her to go to Bush Gardens with them but we have no food or water; we could never come up with the $40 to get her in. We've no car to take her to her friends' houses--so she stays home all the time with me.I haven't dated since I met my husband in 1984. But did I call agencies on Patricia 6 years ago ? of course not, I would never try to destroy a family, even though I thought she was doing wrong to her little girl.And I'm not sure how bad pot is in contrast to cocaine, needle drugs, being drunk--Canada sees it as a medicine for the dying.Patricia does too but she still made the call as if it were real bad . And it doesn't come into this house at all.I would never jeopardize my kids' future by doing anything illegal.
She knows I'm not doing my kids wrong--but she calls all these agencies---who consider whether my kids are too disadvantaged to know me, based on the income we are allowed by our society to have.
Then because I had to spend my last years on earth begging friends to help me, let us shower at their homes, feed us, give me or a daughter a ride to the doctor-- they are all sick of me and drop me because I have too many needs they don't want to have to help me with til I die. I.e., my dignity has been totally undermined by the unlivable income I am tied to. I am not allowed to make a penny more a month or recieve financial help from any friends or family, or even food. All of that counts against me as income and disqualifies me from Medicaid.
How do other families survive on SSI in Florida? I met two who had to divorce like we did to get medical care and medicines to stay alive. Others never did own homes so have been on section 8 housing all their lives (there is a 5-year moratorium on applying for section 8 right now.) Or the father isn't totally disabled too so he can contribute child support.
I know I am not alone, the only mother robbed of all dignity,left to cry ourselves to sleep nightly, so bruised from the callousness of the people we begged for help from that day who all like to say "You need to manage your money somehow! This just goes on and on and on! " Or, "Whenever you call I cringe because I know you need money, a ride, or something fixed...or a few buckets of water, and I can't do it-- I don't want to do it. I don't want your troubles. " Or I'll go to my church and hear the lady ahead of me begging for help and turned away because my church can hardly pay their own electric bill and need us to help THEM. And i know they can't help me, either.They say "Have you ever considered moving?" , like i'm stupid. Yes, all rental houses and apartments with 2 bedrooms are more than I get a month, BEFORE utilites.
So we cry, and pray, and some doubt God exists, after enough years of it. The SSI rules, the Medicaid laws in Florida undermine our life and dignity totally. I am 100% disabled, for life, yet my society doesn't in any way provide for property taxes in my income or allow me to write fictionor type for others or in any other way earn the money to pay my property taxes, so that when I pay them I have to let a utility get cut off. or two. And to repair my roof, oven, wiring, I have to let my electric and water go off for half a year.
And they hold me liable, the IRS does, for my husband's social security taxes yearly incl. the one year he couldn't come up with them, but they would'nt count those same earnings toward my social security and give me Social security and Medicare,which allows you to earn $700 more a month than SSI does.
But this isn't just about how well the government takes care of its poor and vulnerable. The electric company toois complicit, meaning all who work there, make decisions for it, and have stocks in it---that company is RUTHLESS. They know I get my disability check the first of each month but cut my power off on the 30th of each month, ruining all my food I do have, like butter, milk, mayonnaise, salad dressing-- plus charge me an extra $35 for putting me through it!
This is what I am trying to say: God is going to hold us all responsible. He is not going to say, ok, you all didn't know this so you are innocent.
Last night I saw 2 middle-aged men from a religious station, Church of the somesuch, overweight, talking, dressed well, giggling self-conciously, saying this nation is all back- wards and in deep trouble spiritually, the whole world is; then discussing did The Rapture happen in 1867 and was Nero the Antichrist, blah blah.
Not how we can now act--get up and act--to give dignity to our disabled poor families--- and how we MUST. Oh, no. That dialogue is not happening. Conservatives write me "I detect anger in you toward those who have it better than you--you are coveting--" No. Wrong. I am caring about you .
We all have to make big changes here. it can only happen when we become empty vessels for the Spirit to fill .The Word of God eliminates our ego, it wipes out our selfishness, and it replaces our way of thinking , desiring and acting with that of Jesus. BY living the word, a divine logic takes over, a Gospel mind set enters in, we see everything with new eyes. It is an authentic revolution in our lives. The spirituality of unity, the ambition of shared resources . Justice of economic life.
Please think about this, one and all, brothers and sisters,and help to slay the policies that slay our unity and brotherhood. Christ our Lord is every hungry, thirsty person you or I ignore ..watch out! I don't get why every mini-king in a mini-mansion in these zillions of "developments" with two BMWs in the drive doesn't realize his sin is grave and get scared.
An ex-friend of mine who lives alone in a 3,500 square-foot -house with three showers in it decided this month to stop being my friend rather than let us shower at his mansion once a week . he didn't want to be considered a jerk for just being paid $17,000 and not wanting to use a cent of it to turn our water back on or otherwise help us, so he stopped being my frind , with no pain on his side--just ours--- a new electric guitar, etc. on his side--he should be so afraid , man. So afraid of justice. But he loves himself, thinks he's just too cool-- he's already dead.I am so scared for all the people, some so nice, in these royal lives with the his and her sinks and all, while some of their countyfolk are so hungry , losing their kids because they can't pay the utilitiy bills, etc. Why aren't you all scared to death to live like that in the faces of the poor, the eyes of the Lord upon you ?
you need to hear it SOMEWHERE. You simply have got to help. The poorest disabled, diseased, terminally ill Americans with minor children are in a living hell of your creation, not ther own.
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If you want to help someone hurting directly instead of buying fancy office furniture for the charity personnel, Modest needs is a great way. They make the needy family absolutely verify everything pertaining to why they are needy and then pay the bill rather than givecash to them. However they get at leat 1000 more requests a month than they get donors. Please check out the website. At the least you will see how many many Americans are suffering from things like no car to get to work, no electric, eviction--and you'll agree with me that something needs to change. I think if minimum wage was raised and SSI was raised to $20,000 a year , 50% of the suffering in this United States would end forever.
Every visitor suggests I need an index. What some don't know is that I criss-cross many sites that don't lead the visitor back to my whole site but can be accessed from this page. For example, it is embarassing to let people who idolize your grandfather know you have no electricity.I also learned the hard way that Hank Carr fans will use my site to get my address and come to my door for an interview.Writing a book, the fellow said. It's Hank's sister who wants to talk to the book writer, he needs to find her. She isn't that lost--they found her before.All I can tell you about Hank is that we all sat each impoverished hot day trying to get through it. I had cardiomyopathy and a year to live. Why Hank wasn't working I guess is no valid ID.It is a dusty, dirty neighborhood reeking of tom cat spray and rotting vegetation and garbage.No grass holds onto the sand long and your feet are black quickly when you walk outside.It rains 100 days in a row every summer making for hot stinking steaming weeds afterwards all night.There are bugs galore.. Traffic sends exhaust everywhere because there are intersections every 2 homes.
My most visited sites are for the movie A High Wind in Jamaica , Vietnam photos by a vet ( Dan), my grandparents , and Carr-Bowen.Sometimes I get request for stained glass repairs. No one responds to my site on cardiomyopathyalthough many used to .I keep every one seperate--no links to my site from my Johnny G Lyon site, for example.This here page and one like it called simply www.homestead.com/ausable are my only indexes, and portals to all my sites.
Here are some examples of what is on my sprawling Me-o -city:
Speaking of boarding school. They taught us a simple rule of thumb for if it is moral or not: It's moral if it increases capacity to trust people, gives greater integrity to the relationship, enhances self-respect, gives general attitudes of faith and confidence in people, fullfills one's potentialities and gives one a zest for living. It's wrong if it increases a distrust of people, spreads deceit and duplicity in the relationship, builds barriers between the persons involved or between them and others, encourages un-cooperative attitudes, diminishes self-respect, and dwarfs individual capacities.
Everything on this page is an index. There's another little one here .
Most photos at the top are links to their topics--a lass who lived 96 years, our church windows we made, the two children, the pets, our now paralyzed dentist ( story of JOB)...There is a dearth of photos after 2002 because the ppoverty began unabated in 01 and by 02 was untenable. There was no money for film, we hocked and lost the cameras, there was no money, ever, to develope film , or get the scanner looked at so it could work again so I could scan school awards or anything. There was a funny scene today when ungie got caught in the flowers and when Dan broke him lose, had a collar of weeds 4 feet around his head like a green halo as he tried to run off and shake the chain. Dragging on the ground and everything as he tried to run like a deer who's antlers grew down.it's a shame our videocamera has been in hock for most of 3 years now. We don't even get to try to live, laugh at ourselves. it's soooo depressing, liking books and magazines and cable tv programming and filming your cute kids and not getting to do any of it for 3 years and finally recognize that you never are, you have to stay this broke till you die--it's the law. What are they keeping me alive for if this is the pathetic quality of life I cannot take an opportunity to better without losing my medical?I feel like I'm just here to make my kids' lives miserable, right? Would you make any child of yours live off $3000 a year TOTAL incl elec. and phone and running water , clothes and food and medical? You make each of my 2 kids live off that, and me off the third $3000 you give us annually. You couldn't do it. But when after 7 years of it I need new beds, sheets, pillows, towels, washing machine--you say it's my mismanagement of money and walk off.Please dont. I don't want you to go to hell. Please.
Mary and Michelle graduate high school , except Mary's holding her cap and gown. They are now roomates at college. Michelle took 2 years of Japanese at USF while in high school (it's ca,,,ed dual enrollment). Mary taught herself Japanese. Once they got to college, Michelle took Japanese 3 first of all semesters fresman year. Mary tried out for Japanese 1 and tested out at the Japanese 2 level so was able to skip Japanese 1 and go right to Japanese 2. The two plan to pursue Japanese as a dual major with, Michelle, Asian Studies, Mary, Creative Writing. Mary plans for an MFA in creative writing--Michelle plans to get her PhD at a Japanese university. They head the Japan Club and are also in the Kindo (bamboo Japanese sword-fighting) club. Right, totally nuts--except that they plan on living the rest of their lives in Japan. This is my little Girl Scout, with no patriotic feelings toward the U.S. But, I'm proud she self-taught herself past a whole semester of college!
Mercedes, Dan on oxygen, Marina, Susan, Mary, and Mercy from focolare at Mary's high school graduation celebration dinner
Detroit Free Press reporter, my dad, my grandfather on my dad's leave during WW2
.My family. Center-in black-great-grandmother Sarah Alice Lionberger Young; Grandpa's sister Mabel, Grandma,Madelyn(far right)
Marina, far left, back row, Chelsea, Hannah, Tanisha, Shayna, Alicia, ?; front left, 3 Shayna cousins, Lauren
Marina, who was 4 above, is 12 here. She has new friends (too many of them! A party a month!).
Mary, who was 10 above, is 18 here. She's in college in Miami.
Marina 2006 age 12 posed by Mary
Marina as Sprite posed, designed by Mary for art class Nov.2006.
Marina. I wanted to get the red pupils out butPaintshop pro only lets you if you color the irises a false blue. I wanted to sho the real color so I left it natural
Scenery on Mary's college campus
Student Art Mary walks by on her campus daily
Mary on Graduation Day 2006 age 18
Mary's bulletin board on her dorm room. With two Japanophile artists in the 4-girl dorm, what can be said?
