Jesus loves us equally. Is that a bad thing?

Vonda’s Views
April 5, 2010

Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Red and yellow
Black and white
They are precious in His sight.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

I can remember during my informative, inquisitive childhood years, learning this song in Sunday School. Various teachers each week would teach from the Holy Scriptures that Jesus loved us ALL. So I believe that Christ does love us all. That means he loves us all equally does it not?

Yet in recent days I have run across statements that people have made that appear to me to be exclusionary. Equality is not something they want or even believe in. Oh yes I would love to have equality of wages for men and women. I have long been an advocate of that. Especially when I once worked in an office where I was more qualified and experienced than my supervisor yet I was paid a lesser wage because I was a woman. No I didn’t fight it because that was not an option back in that time frame. I did move on though when the next best opportunity arose.

But what about equality in religion? Are there really people that believe that we are not all equal in God’s eyes? Sadly I think so from comments that I hear and from things I see in print.

Jesus died for all the children
All the children of the world
Red and yellow
Black and white
They are precious in His sight.
Jesus died for all the children of the world.

Is being equal such a bad thing? Is it wrong to have a vision of a day when every one is equal or is that some sort of evil indoctrination plot? When the time comes for each of us to meet our Maker, we all will be standing one on one in front of the Lord and he will be looking at us. Not at our skin color or whether or not we went to church every time the doors opened. It’s not going to matter if we helped out a local charity or gave someone the shirt off our back. Its not going to matter if we grew up in the 60’s and 70’s and was a hippie for a while or if we grew up so sheltered that we didn’t have a thought for ourselves.

So what if there was that girl in your class that got pregnant and had a kid out of wedlock? Did that mean you were “better” than her? What about the guy that wore his hair so long he tied it back in a ponytail yet you wore yours in a buzz cut? What about the guys that didn’t want to be drafted and your brother was and he died in Viet Nam? Is that “draft dodger” any less important in God’s eyes.

The point I am trying to make, in my small allotted space, is that religion, particularly the Christian Faith, is about Gods love for us, not about our love for God. He loved us FIRST. And he loves us just as we are. It is because of HIS love that we are changed and we come to love Him. Through that love we seek to change our ways and be more like Him.

Jesus rose for all the children/people
All the children/people of the world
Red and yellow
Black and white
They are precious in His sight.
Jesus rose for all the children/people of the world.

Jesus loves us ALL equally. So equality can be a good thing.

My Name is Corn Bread Junior and I'm Hongry

Vonda’s Views
March 28, 2010

The Great Spring Break Road Trip of 2010

The people that followed my ‘tweets’ of our Spring Break Trip to the west coast and back have been asking for more details of the trip. You know, little things, like would I travel by bus again, and was the trip really fun or did I just make it sound that way. Then there is the question of WHY did we do it straight through like we did.

Would I do it again? Yes yes yes I would and YES I would do it on the GreyHound Bus. Not that it was all glamorous or that I was sitting in the lap of luxury. It was just a great way and an economical way for us to take Anna to across the USA and to see as much of it as we could in 9 days.

There were all sorts of things that happened to us that I found amusing as well as semi alarming but it was also things that were eye-opening experiences for us.
Take for instance, our arrival in Dallas, Texas where we were to transfer to the Los Angeles bound bus; just before we pulled into the bus terminal, our driver began giving us instructions on picking up our luggage and taking it with us to the next bus and telling us how long we would be waiting before we departed on the next leg of the trip. He also told us that even though there is security in the bus terminals, not to leave our luggage unattended as the occasional homeless person or panhandler would come in and start begging for money. His advice was to not give them money, ignore them and call security over. He said sometimes they really were not homeless, just deadbeats looking for an easy target.

We were standing in line with our luggage waiting for the new bus when all of a sudden we heard this voice coming out of the crowd, “My name is Corn Bread Junior and I’m homeless and hongry! Will you give me a couple of dollars so I can get me some food?” Most everyone took one look at the guy and thought uh oh! Ole Corn Bread looked a mess. He had matted hair, was dragging one leg like it was injured or deformed and holding one arm like it was useless, nasty clothes and smelled to high heaven but I noticed his teeth and he had some pretty good teeth that he was flashing around so I was skeptical.

He disappeared into the crowd as the Security guards started looking his way. Soon we heard his voice again, “My name is Corn Bread Junior and I’m Homeless and sleepy and I need a couple of bucks to pay the Salvation Army so I can go get a bed and sleep.” Then he had a cup he would stick in your face and shake at you. I told him I didn’t have any cash on me. By this time, his body odor was really starting to get to people.

Our eyes were watering and some of us were trying to see how long we could hold our breath before having to inhale again. Then he made his final appeal, “my name is Corn Bread Junior and I’m homeless and I need to take a bath!” That one worked because she smelled like he had rolled in Catfish Charley and then got sprayed by a skunk! People were digging for pocket change and anything else they might have handy to put in his cup so that hopefully he would drag his smelly personage away from the terminal.

After he collected his ‘bath money’ he left and some of the folks stood watching him as he left. Sure enough, when he was out of the building, ole Corn Bread Junior started using the bad arm and hand to count his money and his bum deformed leg started walking straight and without a limp. He had seen his target and made the bull’s eye and some honest trusting people became skeptical cynics that morning.

Vonda’s Views
March 12, 2010

To paraphrase Dorothy in the Wizard Oz, “WE aren’t in Mississippi anymore girls!”

By the time this is published I will be on the second or third leg of our great Spring Break Road Trip to see America in 9 days. I decided that we would take the ‘south western’ route out to LA and see Dallas Fort Worth and all of the beautiful deserts through New Mexico and Arizona.

On the return leg of our trip we may have a large detour to make in the Denver area as several tons of boulders the size of semi tractor trailers slid down onto US 70 and that is the main passage through the Rockies. From what I have seen on the news, those are some pot holes that won’t be able to be patched with a little bit of cold patch! The detour is going to make the trip about 4 hours longer but it is also going to take us through the scenic route. As if there is anything more scenic than the Rocky Mountains!

I have an Atlas and I am marking all of the little places that we will be seeing and passing through and it will be fun for me to pass on to my kids a few things about the US. Geography and History has always been one of my stronger subjects.

In the mean time, if you are reading this on Thursday then we are already on the bus going through the Mojave Desert and it might be lunch time in Las Vegas where we will be stopping. I’ve never been there and it will be enough for me just to pass through the city and gawk a little at it.

Anna and Erin will be excited to be heading toward Chicago and our little excursion into the Sears Tower before getting back on the bus and heading to Memphis where Scott and Ariel will be waiting pick us up and bring us home. And as much as I love to travel and see new things, I will be clicking the heels of my red Crocs together 3 times saying “there is no place like home.”

Planning an adventure

Vonda’s Views
March 7, 2010

I love a good adventure story and now I am about to write one of my own.
I have been planning a Spring Break trip for the two high schoolers in my house. We started talking about this back in the Fall after our exchange student Anna arrived to live with us. Anna was trying to grasp the concept of just how big the United States is and we thought that it would be a great idea to take a cross country trip and see as much of the USA as possible in a short period of time. I started researching and came up with the idea of traveling by train or bus. There is nothing like letting someone else doing the driving and navigating while all I do is sit and watch the landscapes and cities go by.

We decided on Chicago and Los Angeles as our destinations; Chicago just long enough to go up in the Sears tower and then on to Los Angeles to see the Pacific Ocean and other points of interest. After contacting friends in the LA area and making arrangements for a place to stay then the fun began; how much money or how little can we make this trip for and just how are we going to get there?

While I really wanted to travel by train, the schedules just were not going to cooperate with us. I want to go out there one route and return on another so that we can travel through as many states as possible. While traveling by train is surprisingly very cost efficient, some routes are only traveled 3 days a week and as luck would have it, it was not the 3 days we needed. So the Greyhound Bus has become our mode of travel.

The girls have been researching all of the ‘free’ things that we can do while we are out there. There is the La Brea Tar Pits at Hancock Park and the Hollywood Star Walk of Fame; Graumans Chinese Theater and all of the Hand and Foot prints of the stars is nearby as is the Hollywood Sign and Griffith Observatory in Griffith Park. I would love to be able to look through that huge telescope into the cosmos! There are many other things that we want to do that will cost money. There is Disneyland and we can’t pass up going to the original Disney theme park. I want to go to the Pacific at Hermosa Beach which is where we lived in 1959 before my Daddy decided to move back to Mississippi.

Anna is from Armenia so we are going to go to visit the area of Los Angeles known as Little Armenia and my friends tell me there are many wonderful Armenian restaurants there so I will finally get to eat some Armenian food. We have found it amusing that Los Angeles has more Armenians living there than do in her native land.

I am busily trying to plan something on paper so we can cram as much as possible into every day as we will only have 4 days to see and do as much as we can On the way out there we will have meal stops in St. Louis and Denver and Las Vegas and then on the trip back we will have meal times in Phoenix and El Paso and Dallas before finally getting to Memphis. Its going to be a long ride but we will travel through 12 states seeing everything from the Plains to the mountains to the deserts and a little of everything else in between. I will be journaling the whole time and taking pictures.

I love adventures and taking a bus trip with a couple of teenage girls to LA so we can say we wet our toes in the Pacific should be a good one.

15 minutes of Fame

These days it seems like everyone is famous for at least 15 minutes. Or maybe its just five minutes but it sure does appear that everyone, especially young people are obsessed with being a celebrity. Look at all of the reality type shows on television now. People standing in front of so called industry judges singing (very badly I might add) at the top of their lungs trying for fame and fortune; or prancing up and down a runway or posing vogue in front of cameras aiming to be the next top model.

We sit glued to the television listening to people say that they want to have plastic surgery so they can look like some glamorous model or we hear these wannabe singers talk about living the dream and failure is not an option for them or they gush that they have worked all their life to reach this moment and most of them are not even past 20 yet!
Even in the sports arena, you see young people thinking that every one of them going to be the next great quarterback of the NFL or something along those lines. They all want to be rich and famous. What lofty goals our young people have now days.

Young people think fame is their birthright. They have a sense of entitlement that is bigger than anything I have ever seen. Kids (as well as some adults!) look at these reality shows and think “I can do that” and that becomes their life’s ambition. The majority of kids leaving schools today no longer want to be study to be doctors or lawyers or architects or teachers or rocket scientists or plumbers or electricians; they want to be famous. They want to be celebs; they think being a celebrity is the short track to wealth and happiness and they are firmly convinced that it will bring them everything they ever wanted. There is an entire generation WORLD WIDE apparently, that thinks if you have a lot of money and material things then you will be happy and they don’t understand that nothing worth having is going to come without a lot of blood, sweat and tears, work and scrabbling to the make it.

As a parent I have always tried to tell my girls that they can be anything they set their mind on but that it takes hard work and perseverance as well as being in the right place at the right time. I am a classically trained artist and a good one. I had the opportunity to work in a couple of major cities where the world of commercial art is strong but I choose a long time ago to stay in Mississippi. Would I have been rich and famous had I gone somewhere else? I can’t say. Maybe. Maybe not. Do I regret not taking the big leap? Nope. I had and still have the talent but having the talent isn’t the be all and end all of it. I was not cut throat enough to survive and I saw that pretty early on in my career. So I chose to stay close to home to be with family and to raise a family. Even now at the age of 56, I still am not cut throat enough for some things.

Watching all this debacle about the state of education in our state has made me think about a few things. I have never thought kids get a good enough education in our state. Not on the public level anyway. The teachers might as well be hog tied for all of the restrictions and for the things they are required to do. And how they do it with what little they get paid…well my hat is off to them. But I do get tired of buying reams of copy paper for each of my daughters’ classes. I have complained about that ever since they reentered the public school system.

I home schooled my daughters until their junior years in high school. Why? Because I could and because I felt that I could offer them a much broader education than they would ever get in the public school system. It was hard work for 9 years and we all learned a lot and did a lot of things. They sometimes thought I was crazy for the things that I presented to them to learn about but the one that is now a junior in college finally understands some of the things I was pushing her to learn. I knew when she got to the university level she would understand. Now both my girls are looking forward to their higher education and making plans for their future.

I haven’t heard the phrase ‘I want to be famous’ out of either of them but the spark is probably there. With a good solid education and a lot of hard work, hopefully they will have learned a good trade and have a worthy career and find their 15 minutes of fame and hold on to it. I just hope and pray that there are kids out there that still think being a nurse and doctor and a tech is good. There needs to be more respect for the plumber and the electrician too. Those are very worthy careers. It’s better to be a great in demand electrician and plumber than a mediocre singer or anorexic model.

Traveling with Teenagers on a field trip

I’ve said it before and I will say it again….traveling with a group of teenagers is like herding cats. It is always an adventure!

Last week, I and Donna Williams the Regional Director for AYUSA in Mississippi, took a group of 12 exchange students down to see our state Capitol and some of the other sights to be seen around Jackson. We left bright and early Tuesday morning and started picking up students. I had warned all the kids to pack light and only bring the necessary stuff . Just because I drive a 15 passenger van does not mean it has room for people AND luggage. It is sometimes an either/or situation.

At any rate we got everyone and their stuff into the van. The first little casualty of the trip happened down in Grenada. We had just picked up the last 6 kids and we stopped at a quick stop store for the last rest room break and for coffee. One of the girls, Julia, was sitting on the very back row and she decided to climb over the back of the seat and go out the rear door. IN the process of doing that her blue jeans ripped right in the rear seam. IT turned out that was the only pair of pants she had brought along on the one day trip. I told her we would just have to wait till we got to Jackson to purchase her some new jeans.

The trip down went pretty quickly. We had decided to spend the night in Canton because the rooms in the motel there were not as expensive as in Jackson and the budget was already tight. We arrived in Canton and checked into our rooms and we unpacked the van and everyone quickly got ready to go on to the Capitol to meet State Rep. Jim Beckett. Jim had a arranged a tour for us so we needed to get there quickly. But before we could go there was the matter of replacing those jeans. I was not about to let that child go into the Capitol with her a large portion of her leg hanging out.

Trying to find a Wal-Mart, when you aren’t looking for one, is nearly impossible. But I did find a Kohl’s. The second I pulled into the parking lot all the other girls shouted ‘SHOPPING’ and Donna and I were shouting NO! I got out with Julia and we headed into the store. I told her it would be a fast trip. I spied the jeans in the junior department and steered her in that direction. We found the one pair in her size, she tried them on, I approved of them, she paid for them and we were back out the door and in the van in 15 minutes.

Then we were going to grab a quick lunch and that was when Donna discovered that she had left her wallet back in Canton in the room. So we drove back to Canton to retrieve the money, Julia put on the new jeans and we raced to eat some lunch and then to the Capitol. After driving in circles for what seemed like forever, I finally found a space large enough to park the van in that was close to the Capitol building. We started walking and then everyone had to take pictures and more pictures and by the time we got inside we were late for our tour. We were beyond late actually and our tour guide was not a happy camper.

She warmed up after hearing the convoluted story of the ripped pants, search for a store, the hurried pants search and the forgotten money. She gave the kids a very good tour and they sat in the gallery of both the Senate and the House and they asked questions. I just took pictures to document the events and kept to the back of the line to make sure we didn’t lose anyone!

After we left the Capitol, we were invited to dinner at a friend’s home out in Brandon on the Ross Barnett Reservoir. I relied on the GPS to get me there with some directions and landmark advice from my friend. We found her home and the kids were treated to a beautiful view, some great food and Mardi Gras fun and a few games of billiards. The adults hung out in the kitchen discussing the joys of hosting international exchange students while watching kids from 9 nations talking and interacting.

After a great dinner we returned to our motel rooms and had a good nights rest and the next morning went to the Museum of Natural Science before heading back home. It was a quick trip and we wanted to do more but that will come another day. For the exchange students, their time here is rapidly coming to an end as most will start going home in May. Donna and I are already looking for family’s to host students for the 2010-2011 school year. If you have ever thought about hosting, now is the time to look. I am already looking forward to planning trips for next year’s group of kids.

Taking them places may be like herding cats, but it’s a fun thing to let the cats out of the bag as they learn what life is like for teenagers in Mississippi USA!

Snow Days and the natives are getting restless

Ya’ll staying warm enough? I’m wearing layers and a cap pretty much 24 hours a day. I discovered that there is warmer air in my upright freezer than outside my kitchen door. And it has been a mad race to keep the pipes from freezing and to help the dog have drinking water with out her little tongue being frozen to her water dish! I’m trying to figure out why I should bring in my yard dog so she won’t freeze to death in this bitter cold, yet the tiniest of birds can survive without any help from me and they stay in little stick nests up in the branches of bare trees!

The kids were all excited to have ‘snow days’ just two days after the winter break was over. Parents all over the area could be heard groaning when they heard those words on the weather report because you know you can only have so many days of kids being home before the natives get a full blown case of cabin fever and start attacking!

I was working in the Amory area all day Wednesday and it was about 7:30 in the evening when I decided I might need to pick up some bread and milk before I left that town. So I ducked into the Piggly Wiggly there. Unlike most people apparently, I really was out of those two items. As I was shopping, a gentleman came in and grabbed a carton of milk and stood in line. Pretty soon he was joined by a second man with milk and then a third. See the pattern? It got better. One man turned to the other and said, my wife called me and told me bad weather in on the way and to pick up some milk. The next guy said,” me too.” The third man just grinned and held up his milk and a loaf of bread. Then a fourth man gets in line with bread and milk and he said, “my wife called me too. We don’t even drink milk!”

I just chuckled at them and went on buying my ingredients for making the menu for the week” chili, a chicken pie, stir-fried chicken and stewed potato soup. The shelves were pretty bare as I tried to find all the things on my grocery list. There were no loaves of bread so I just bought bread mix and decided to bake my own. The poor little girl that checked me out said that it had been busier than the day before Christmas.

After I paid and got back in the van with my purchases I chuckled at the logic of buying a carton of milk and a loaf of bread to prepare for bad weather. Why is it when we hear the words snow storm that we buy things that we don’t even use? And just how far does one expect to get with a single carton of milk and a loaf of bread? I thought that might have been a little male logic going on there.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the white stuff on the ground the next morning. It threw a monkey wrench into my work week but it was nice to have a snow day and to cook the nice pot of chili and the chicken pot pie. The hot bread and fresh lemon cake and steaming mug of coffee helped me get over the fact that pipes might be freezing and that there were teenagers upstairs and the natives were getting restless!

dealing with the downhill slide of the holidays

Blogging from Bruce
Vonda Keon


Well I don’t know about you but, whatever holidays you celebrated in November, December, and January, they're over now. All of that special food that we slaved over the stoves to cook has been eaten and the decorations are slowly coming down. The New Year is here, though I haven’t decided how I should see it. Should I see it with hope or fear, it is totally up to me.

In most of the western world, January is a month of coming down. We have spent November and December gearing up, getting ready, anticipating days off from work, travel, good food, and good times with people we love. Then January comes, and that's all over. Not only that, but the bills for all that hope and anticipation and fun start arriving and we have to go back to our normal daily routine. It's no wonder if we sometimes look up and ask if the holidays really meant anything after all. Because even if the holidays were stressful, the days after bring on even more stress!

We are now in the Season of Letdown. Seasons of letdown are difficult for the human spirit. They just are. The truth is, our lives cycle and recycle all the time, though we don't often notice because we're too busy experiencing the feelings of wherever we are in the cycle. We are constantly going through ups and downs. We cycle as individuals, as family groups, as business groups, as friends, as a culture, as a country, and as a world..

Right now for me it's almost a relief to say, "It's January, and I'm on the downward side of the holiday season cycle. It's normal for me to feel tired, a more than a little overwhelmed with everyday life coming back at me, and even a little sad. I sat down on New Years Day and tears just started welling in my eyes. I never could figure out why. I had enjoyed a wonderful day with family and we ate great food. The tears just happened of their own accord.

When I get in such a mood I find that I have to find my quiet space and hole up in it for a while. I have been over stimulated by the sights and sounds and smells of the holidays. I have been overwhelmed with the constant searching for the perfect gifts. I have been inundated with the various duties my four part time jobs have thrown at me! The only way I can make it through the downside is to sit and reflect and recharge my ‘batteries’ so I have to take time to be quiet and to contemplate or write or read some of numerous books I have. When I remember the good times I find it much easier to be content in the present time.

Now that January has arrived I have to start focusing on other things and other people. I have work to do and hopefully some trips to plan an escape from the daily life. Focusing on these things allows me to find contentment. Focusing like this can be difficult, when the time is still so close to what was exciting. I have had to develop a Meditation Mind. In meditation, practitioners are asked to focus and relax. When they find their minds wandering, they are asked to simply recall themselves to the focus. This kind of mindset can also serve well in focusing on the present, if you find your mind wandering; simply bring it back to the task at hand. Repeated practice allows our minds to attain focus easier and hold it longer.

If you're down after the holidays, I hope you can find the quiet space and time so you can focus and help you out whenever you're in the downward part of a cycle.

The Silence of the Holy Night

As the Advent of Christmas is fully on us, two of my senses are overwhelmed with the sights and sounds or Christmas: All of the blinking Christmas lights and then the music. I love Christmas music. Some of songs make me laugh and some of them make me cry but they all make me happy when I hear them. I love sitting in our van listening to the music that our Christmas lights are synchronized to. But there are some people that can’t get the full effect our light displays because they can’t hear.

I have been fortunate that throughout my life I have a wide variety of friends. Not just male or female, young and old but I have had the pleasure of friendships with people from many different cultures and backgrounds. I have learned a smattering of words in several languages and how to cook some really wonderful foods. I even have friends that are a bit out of the ordinary. I count among my friends someone who is blind and a few who are deaf or hearing impaired.

I was visiting with one of my dear friends who is hearing impaired and we were watching my lights and I realized that for her, it was just lights randomly blinking. She could not hear the pure musical tones to Silent Night so what was the huge attraction of the blinking lights?

My deaf friends live in a silent world that most of us think we long for. There are days when I just don’t want to hear anything and every little noise wakes me up or gets on my last nerve. And I suffer from Tinnitus so I always have a high pitched sound going on in my head that really gets loud at times. I never have total silence with that going off in my head.

Today, (Sunday), I had some Christmas gifts that I had to work on and this article to write and I thought I would block out everything to stop me from being distracted from people walking around overhead and dogs barking and the washing machine churning and the heater coming on and going off. Then there was a football game, the girls fixing a meal, more laundry, the sound of the hot water going through the pipes making its crazy knocking sounds and the squeak in my chair. Toss in someone upstairs singing slightly off-key at times and there is a cacophony of pure racket.

I keep earplugs handy so I popped some into my ears and blocked out the external sounds. Alas the tinny ringing is still going strong but I could not hear anything else. No cell phone, no tv, no washing machine….silence. ahhhh.

But is it really so wonderful? Just think about not being able to hear. You don’t hear everything going on around you. Unless people are directly in your line of sight and you see their lips moving, you don’t realize or catch everything that is going on around you. People behind you might say something and when you don’t respond, they don’t take the time to figure out that you don’t hear. Or even worse, they KNOW you can’t hear and they treat you like you don’t have good sense.

I have seen this happen with my dear friends. People take advantage of their deafness or say ugly things about them right in their presence knowing that they don’t understand. They don’t even try to communicate with them. That is almost too much for me to bear. I am trying to learn to better communicate with her and I am slowly learning another language called Sign because I know that I am a hard person to try and lip read. And I with help from my friend I know that I will learn more and more of her language and her silent world.

As I sit here in my self-imposed sound deprivation I realize that for my friend, Christmas has always been about the Silent Night. It is in the silence that we hear the whisper of Gods voice. My friend has been blessed to truly know the holiness of the Silent Night.

Thanksgiving gets the short end sometimes

Although sometimes it does get the short end of the wishbone where holidays are concerned, Thanksgiving is pretty high on my list of favorite holidays. There's nothing to compare with waking up to the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade with all of the huge balloons, spending a lazy day with family and gorging ourselves with the most amazing meal that we have looked forward to since last year!

Thanksgiving is another one of those things that we Americans do that no one else in the world does. Our Pilgrim forefathers were so thankful that they had survived the long year of 1621 in the New World that they celebrated the bounty that they had and gave thanks to the Lord for it. Although they did have a three-day feast in celebration of a good harvest, and the local Indians did participate, this "first Thanksgiving" was not a holiday, it was simply a gathering and it wasn’t repeated the next year.

The harvest of 1621 was a bountiful one. And the surviving colonists decided to celebrate with a feast -- including 91 Indians who had helped the Pilgrims survive their first year. It is believed that the Pilgrims would not have made it through the year without the help of the natives. The feast was more of a traditional English harvest festival than a true "thanksgiving" observance. It lasted three days. They didn’t have pumpkin pies because they would not have had flour or sugar left and large bowls of mashed potatoes would have been unheard of because the potato was thought to be poisonous at that time.

Governor William Bradford sent "four men fowling" after wild ducks and geese. It is not certain that wild turkey was part of their feast. However, it is certain that they had deer meat. The term "turkey" was used by the Pilgrims to mean any sort of wild fowl.

One of the exchange students living with us asked me, in all seriousness, when we would go and find the turkey for our thanksgiving dinner. When I said that the next time I went to the grocery I might get a turkey breast, I noticed the confused look on her face. It took a little while to register with me that she thought we would go out and hunt for turkey. I explained to her that most people ‘hunted’ their thanksgiving turkey in the frozen food section of the local grocery stores or better yet would call the stores’ deli or call Joe’s Market and order the pans of dressing and the turkey already cooked to perfection.

I know it was a big disappointment for her that our family didn’t have a turkey to carve or big drumsticks to gnaw on or the wishbone to pull because it’s our family tradition to have chicken and dressing and baked ham. We only eat Moms dressing twice a year and it is always worth the long wait. The feast was good as always and we had a good time feasting on sweet potato casserole and corn salad and other side dishes and hot rolls and then finishing off with slices of pumpkin pie and sweet potato pie or a big slab of my sisters strawberry cake.

Now that Thanksgiving is officially over, I can concentrate on Advent and getting my home ready for Christmas. I can decorate my trees and put out my Christmas village and start bringing out my figurines and light the Advent candles each week as Mary and Joseph make their way around the room for their final destination of the stable and the manger and ready our home and hearts for the coming of the Lord. I won’t need a wishbone for that.

Thankful for my Freedom

Blogging from Bruce
November 22, 2009

Vonda Keon

This is the time of year when people start thinking about what all they are thankful for in their lives. Thanksgiving is something that is truly unique that we Americans can claim as our own. I‘ve been involved in several discussions with different exchange students lately about why we do things the way we do in our country because they come to our country sometimes with a very romantic idea of what life will be like in America. Sometimes they are disappointed after they arrive because life here is not quite what they expected. But I can give them all kinds of reasons why it is good to live in the United States.

There are some things in America that give me cause to shake my head in wonder as to why our elected officials act the way they do. And there are times when I have to wonder if things will ever really change among people of different races and ethnic groups; i.e. the group of hooded protesters on the Ole Miss campus on Saturdays game day. I was glad to see photos of another group of protesters that chose expose their faces and to turn their backs on the hooded ones. The kids that turned their backs on hate were not hiding their identity. Those kids are the true future leaders. In America we have the FREEDOM to peaceful protest. We may not agree with each and every group that is protesting but at least we can protest something and make ourselves be seen and heard.

In the United States we can travel from east coast to the west coast and from the Canadian border to the Mexican border of this huge country any time we choose and we don’t have to have papers or pay bribes just to go from one state to another. We have the FREEDOM to hop in the car to go to an amusement park in another state or to travel to our nation’s capitol to see the sights.

In the US we have all extremes of terrain from the deserts to the beaches and oceans to snowcapped mountain peaks and volcanoes. We have vast rolling hills and forests and wide open spaces of green grass and fields of grain and fruit orchards. We have enormous rivers and the delta land around them and deep canyons and inland lakes.

We don’t have to worry about someone on the west side of the county shooting a rocket at the east side of the county. We don’t have to worry about land mines or suicide bombers. Let’s hope and pray that we never have to worry about that.

In the United States a kid can grow up to be anything they dream of if they work hard enough because the opportunity is there if the desire is. We aren’t stuck in some caste system where you are what your father and grandfather was. Everyone has the FREEDOM to get an education.

No, life here is not perfect by a long shot. We don’t live in Utopia. We have hungry people and homeless people and people looking for jobs. But we also help the homeless and the hungry and the unemployed. We have the FREEDOM to help those that might not have much to be thankful for. We have the FREEDOM to worship in the church of our choice. (Or for some, the FREEDOM not to worship.)

The bottom line is, in the United States of America, We have a great many things to be thankful for. But the one thing that sets us apart from other countries is that we have FREEDOM. As you gather round your Thanksgiving table look at all you have; your feast, your family, a roof over your head, a clean bed to sleep in, clothes on your back, the relative safety you live in. Be thankful for your FREEDOM.

Christmas Trees and the Exchange Students

Having two exchange students living under my roof is always a challenge. There are constant questions that I must give explanations to. Foods, culture, styles of worship, and what things mean. It’s a learning process for everyone. This past weekend was a good learning experience about Christmas in the USA.

Here we are, hot off the Halloween night of Tricks and Treats, going full speed ahead into Christmas like a runaway train on a slippery down hill slope. They want to know about Thanksgiving but its Christmas that is at the top of the list now. I took them to the different Christmas open houses in town and they were amazed at the Christmas trees. I have not given the themed trees much thought. In a past job I was the Visual Merchandising Manager for McRaes if you can remember that incarnation of Belk’s. The last year I worked there I decorated 72 Christmas trees for the Pre-Christmas Harvest Sale. I worked for weeks on those trees, wrapping the branches with hundreds of strands of lights and then coming up with a myriad of themes for the trees.

After that particular year, I would get my tree up and get the lights on it and that was about it. I could not bring myself to put another ornament on a tree. Thankfully I married a man that would decorate the tree and I would sit back and direct. As my children got older they would put the ornaments on the tree. When they were little it was very heavily decorated on the lower half of the tree until they grew taller.

A few years ago I finally found a color scheme I liked and once the tree was decorated I left it like that and put the tree on the corner or the living room behind a screen and left it up; for three years. All I had to do at Christmas was uncover it and plug it in. Then this past spring, my darling daughters undecorated my tree.

So what does this have to do with Christmas Open House and my exchange students? Well they saw all of the beautiful trees and the multitude of decorations and color schemes and themes and they were asking questions about it. Anna was looking at one tree and it had ornaments shaped like candy on it and little red shoe ornaments. She asked “what does a red high heel have to do with Christmas?” Amjaad was fascinated by the pink trees and white trees and gold trees. Both girls said back in their home countries they use live green trees. And they don’t do themes like we do. Anna said she mother might look at one of our trees with all of the decorations and ribbons and sprays and ask ‘Where is the tree?”

They came home and decided to try their hand at decorating my tree. It has a lot of lights on it already so all they have to do is start looking through all of my ornaments and deciding how they want to do it. They are really looking forward to helping Scott as he starts putting up our Christmas Light Display for this year.

We Americans just don’t realize that no one does Christmas like we do. We are a bit over the top in our country with the blending of the secular Christmas and Religious Christmas. Bright, sometimes gaudy Christmas displays sit along side the simple Christmas manager scenes. “Holly Jolly Christmas” and “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer”are “Rockin a Round the Christmas Tree” right up until “Silent Night” turns into “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” and “What Child is This” is born in “O Little Town of Bethlehem”.

Yes we do start earlier and earlier each year it seems. That is the secular part of it along with the stress of getting presents that eats away at the pocketbook. The Christian part of Christmas is still the same here as it is in Bethlehem, where Amjaad is from and the place of Jesus birth, and in Anna’s home country of Armenia which is the oldest Christian country. You may see Christmas Trees decorated with fruit or butterflies, or flamingos or red shoes or classic round ornaments. The trees may be traditional green or not so tradition lime green or pink or purple or white or gold. But the theme is still the celebration of the birth of The Christ

Part two of Its the Future are we there yet?

In my childhood I rode my bike all over the town of Bruce, with my parent’s blessing, and wearing a helmet never occurred to me or my parents. Now I see kids on tricycles in their own yards and they better be wearing a helmet, or his parents are guilty of child abuse. The mere notion, (that was alive and well when I was a kid), was that life is risky and certain bad things are just going to happen from time to time. Well, that thought is gone today. Now life must be safe, and anything that makes it unsafe must be done away with, or at least severely punished.

Manufacturers of anything are sued into oblivion every time one of their products is even remotely involved in an accident, because their product isn’t safe enough. The greatest cost in manufacturing a step ladder is to offset the cost of the inevitable lawsuits brought by those who hurt themselves using it. How dare ladders not be made 100% safe, no matter how it’s used or misused?

It hasn’t been that long ago that a man had the RIGHT to risk his own life and even be a damned fool about it if he so chose. Not any more. Now, every time something tragic happens as a result of adventurers doing adventurous things, such as a death or injury during a mountain climb, there follows the cry to outlaw said activity “for their own good.” Safety must be imposed on the foolish and daring for their own good.

I suppose that if the powers that be had their way and could play Big Brother Nanny, they would manipulate and work behind the scenes and fiddle with our destinies because they are totally motivated by the desire that everything be 100 percent safe. Every thing would be designed to keep everyone safe from anything that might possibly cause them harm.

If the Big Brother Nanny had his way, there would be no sharp corners or no splinters or no cracks in pavement for us to hang our toes. All cars and highways would be safe because they would be able to control our cars by computer and an alarm could go off in some far away room and warn BBN that we were going over the speed limit and they could just shut down the engine. Or better yet they might watch and see how many hours we had driven and they would decide that we might be too tired to drive so they start sending out the message that we need to pull over and sleep.

A small segment of the American people have already shown themselves to be willing to trade freedom for safety. The government already regulates us, in case we make stupid choices. We are taxed so we don’t spend our wealth in foolish pursuits. The demand to MAKE US SAFE has already created groups that will frown upon all adventurous individuals as dangerous and insane! Gone are the days when you could just go to the doctor and have surgery. Now he has to worry if he will be sued for NOT curing what ails you. We are on a terrible path to safety above all else. And that my friends means more control over our lives.

I don’t know about you, but I believe in free choice. The good Lord gave us a brain and he knows that we only come to him freely of our own will and not because he has manipulated us. I once decided to fold myself up and squeeze my rotund butt into a 55 gallon plastic drum and roll down the hill between my house and my Moms. Why? Because it seemed like it would be a fun thing to do. I broke a rib doing that but I didn’t sue the manufacturer of the plastic barrel from not putting a warning label on the thing. I just wrapped my ribs and took Tylenol and sat up very straight for a few days. Did I learn a lesson? You bet I did. I learned that I wanted to do it again but the next time I wanted padding in the barrel with me!

Is the adventurous spirit dying in people? We are in the future minus the jetpacks and flying cars and pretty soon minus the freedom to decide if we want those adventurous things. Why can’t we continue to use free choice in all aspects of our lives? If Freedom to choose is good enough for God then it ought to be good enough for the Big Brother Nanny state. I’ll be willing to bet they don’t believe. What do you think?

The moving around of foreign exchange students. It just happens

Since the rumor mill is abuzz in this little town, I am sure that everyone knows, that as a CR for a Global Youth Exchange program, I moved an exchange student this week. As a matter of fact there were 4 kids moved within the state in the last few days. Last year the same thing happened. And next year there will probably be someone that is relocated or sent home. Its not a big deal unless someone makes one of it.

The exchange student program offers these kids an opportunity to come and live with people from very different backgrounds from their own. Most of them have traveled within their continents but they all dream of coming to America. They come here to a land where there are many viewpoints and they have to adjust to a lot of things when they get here. They are using a language that is not their native language but they have learned it well enough to get here and then they find that what they learned is not nearly enough. They are hit with new tastes in foods, different weather, a different home, a different type of school system. They are away from their home church or they come from a country where they don't go to church and they are now in the heart of the Bible belt. They miss their Mom's hugs and Dad's pats on the head. They miss their festivals and celebrations. If in their country they greet each other with a hug and kiss on the cheek, they are surprised to find that here people just smile and shake hands and say hello. There are hundreds of little things that are different and they all of a sudden add up to one big culture shock.

When they first arrive here it is fun to see the differences and to learn how to do things differently. Sometimes, and its usually about the 2 month mark, they get tired of having to remember how to do so many things. They start to feel that everything is different; nothing seems familiar any longer. Nothing is comfortable. Anyone who travels, for any length of time to any place, experiences this and its called "culture shock".

Culture Shock means that your mind is tired of having to think about everything. You are tired of have to figure out if something you are doing is right or wrong. When you get tired you brain stops trying to understand and you withdraw. Instead of adjusting you become quiet and you think of home and all that you are missing. You become confused at things and maybe angry and then you feel isolated. You start to think that people don't like you. They don't seem to be treating you the way you imagined that American Moms and Dads would treat their children. You want to be a member of the new family but you feel like an outsider. Your host family is usually hitting the culture wall too and even though they should realize that you are having difficulty, they don't because they are trying to deal with their own type of shock. Thus the misunderstandings start and bad feelings can happen.

There are many signs of Culture shock. Your eating patterns change. You either eat too much or too little. You sleep more than usual. You start having headaches. You feel helpless and like you are stuck someplace far from your family and friends and time is going so slow and the end is not in sight.
You get angry for no reason or for things that really aren't worth getting angry about. You start thinking that someone might hurt you, or take your things or take advantage of you because you have heard of other students that have had bad experiences. You are horribly homesick and you just want to go back home to what is familiar.

When hosting an exchange student many things come into play. Sometimes expectations are too high on both sides. And when the culture shock hits, the host family doesn't always recognize it for what is and the child is then considered by some to be difficult. Oh I should know! I had two students last year and one of them had me climbing the walls for a little while until we worked a few things out. After we sat down and worked through the issues that both of us had, it was smooth sailing and we all had a wonderful experience. And those girls were very much considered members of our family and we felt great sadness when we put them on the planes to send them back to their families.

Now there are times when the host family and the student just won't mix like oil and water. It just happens. The function of the Community Rep is to keep close tabs on the student's progress both in the home and in the school and community. There are questions that we ask of the Host Family and the student and the schools on a regular basis and we can usually identify a problem and try to work through it before it escalates into something that can't be fixed. And we have to turn in a report after each conversation. If the incompatibility becomes too great and starts creating chaos, we are responsible for going and getting the child and moving them to another home because that is what the State Department and the Overseas Partners tell us to do. We are just doing our job.

Incompatibility is not a sin. It is no one's fault. The kids are not ungrateful. They are usually extremely sad and feel that they have failed at trying to fit in and be a member of the host family. It causes them great pain and shame. Incompatiblity just happens folks.

And the truth be told, when the child is moved it's usually an unspoken relief for everyone involved. So let's just leave it at that and put this to rest and shut down the rumor mill. That is best for all parties concerned. The children that I have placed are my first concern and responsiblity.

Its the Future. Are we there yet?

Do you remember all those interesting books and comics and movies of your youth about what the future would be like? At Disney Land in California there was a section called Tomorrowland and it had the ‘House of the Future” and what an interesting sight that modular unit was. Then there were the jet packs and flying cars and instant foods.

There was real talk of traveling to the far reaches of Outer Space and building colonies and living there while all we were sitting at home watching Science Fiction cartoons like the Jetsons and other programs like Star Trek and later on Battle Star Galactica and now there is a complete channel devoted to Sci-Fi.

So I ponder this thought. Have we not arrived in the future if we don’t have jetpacks and flying cars and household personal robots? THEY told us we would have these things in the future so when do we get to the future?

As I pondered this dilemma I started thinking that on the one hand we have these wonderful new devices called lap tops and flat computer screens you can play games on, just like they did in the Legion of Superheroes — which is definitely in the future, and we are already blessed (and/or cursed) with so many other technological wonders probably were not imagined by those who designed our future so long ago, but we don’t still don’t have the jetpacks and the flying cars. So does that mean we are not in the future yet? Are we just stuck in the perpetual now waiting for permission to say or go into the ‘future?

As I thought long and hard (and that squeaking, creaking high pitched whining sound you have been hearing is my thoughts) the realization that we have arrived in the future hit. The jetpacks and flying cars are out there as promised. There is the Moller Skycar. In 2007, Moller announced that the M200G Volantor a precursor to the Moller Skycar, capable of hovering 10 feet above the ground using 70% ethanol and 30% water for fuel and traveling up to 50 MPH would hopefully be on the market in the United States by early 2008. Depending on demand, Moller says, the M200G Volantor could cost under $100,000 and I will tell you right now it is never going to put on the market.

Why? Where are they? Why isn’t there one in every driveway? Well here is the depressing part, folks. We don’t have them, NOT because there isn’t any entrepreneur willing to make them. We don’t have them because “Some body” rejected them. “Some body” collectively said, “No thanks.” And why is that? Because “Some body” said they’re not safe.

I grew up with a “Crop Duster” Dad and lived around all manner of flying aircraft all of my life. I studied airplanes and have always had an interest in flying and the earlier airplanes and cars of our past were everything but safe. But airplanes and motor cars were invented and introduced to the public in a more adventurous age; when people didn’t think or stress about safety to such an obsessive degree. We want more safety, Nay! we expect and demand it now more than we did then. If cars and airplanes were introduced for the first time today they’d never get government approval. They’d never be able to jump through all of the regulatory hoops any new product has to overcome today because “Some body” would be out there braying about how unsafe and dangerous they are!

Need any more examples? I’ve got a few more of them. I show you in Part Two next week.

Words Can and Will Come Back to Haunt you. (Oct.12 blog)

Have you ever seen an old photo of yourself and been embarrassed at the way you looked? Did we actually dress like that? Well yeah we did and to matters worse, we had no clue as to how silly we looked. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at, can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed. It's the nature of fashion to be invisible, just like we are unaware that the earth moves but is invisible to all of us riding on it. That’s a haunting thought.

If I could travel back in a time machine, one thing would be true no matter where I went: I would have to watch what I said. Opinions we consider harmless could cause big trouble. I've already said at least one thing that would have gotten me in big trouble in most of Europe in the seventeenth century, and did get Galileo in major trouble when he said it-- that the earth moves. It took him centuries before poor old Galileo was forgiven for what he was right about and had the courage to talk about!

There are times that you should just hush up and keep your opinions to yourself just as there are times when you should bite the bullet and speak up and for some people that is where the hard part begins. How do you know when you should speak what is on your mind and how do you determine when to keep your mouth shut and your thoughts to yourself? I have struggled with that daily all of my life and there are days when I just throw caution to the wind and ‘let ‘er rip!’

So here are some examples of things that I think should not be said.

If someone has lost their full time job, as I did back in March, don’t say ‘everything happens for a reason’ or ‘don’t take it personally’ or my personal favorite, ‘Don’t worry. You’ll find something right away.’ Guess what? I did take it personally and jobs don’t grow on trees just like money doesn’t.

Having trouble with customer service at a business or a medical facility etc? Don’t go in and tell them that you will never shop, come there again, etc. They don’t care because it means they won’t have to deal with you again. Don’t go in cursing, accusing, badgering. (See the statement before) don’t go in and threaten to get them fired or threaten bodily harm (they have just called security on you and you will be goose stepped out of the business) and don’t threaten them with a lawyer because they will go into CYA mode and clam up and ignore you from them on!

Recently I was working some store resets with another woman and at one of our last stops, the chains District Manager was present. He watched us as we were doing the reset and asked my work partner how much longer she was going to continue to work. We thought it a bit strange until he asked when her baby was due. Men! Not all women with tummies are pregnant. Some of us are over weight and are aware of it.

Another example of what not to say happened to me years ago when I was in a meeting with a school administrator. I was not happy with a situation involving my daughters at school. The administrator made the remark that “parents didn’t always know what was right for their child” implying that he, as a school teacher and administrator knew more about raising a child than I did. He later said he knew he had blown that meeting the second those words left his mouth. I pulled my daughters out of school a month later and homeschooled them for the next 8 years.

I like to keep abreast of the goings on in local city government. At a recent city board meeting, some questions were posed to the mayor and after a heated discussion the mayor said, “I think…I think…I am a lawyer and I think I understand that ordinance a lot better than you do.” Now my question is does he think because he has a law degree that he is smarter than most people? Since I have heard that statement before I think he really does think he is superior to others and that is sad because he is not the only person that has an education or better yet that has common sense and intelligence which counts a lot more than a sheep skin parchment hanging in a study.

A disabled child was attacked by a couple of bully’s at school and no one from the school called the mother to tell her. The mom found out when her child came home from school with a knot on his head. When confronted, school officials said they had taken care of the situation. A child is attacked on school property during school hours and no one called the parent? That is definitely a time that someone should have spoken out. Bully’s have no place in our schools and the schools should not perceived as trying to downplay the incident. Parents have the right to know when things happen immediately.

Saying the things that we think can be taboo at times. So we just have to pick and choose and analyze each situation before speaking. Just like those horrendous fashion and hair faux pas of our younger days, everyone has an opinion and in America we have the freedom to express it. We just need to be careful in each instance and express it the proper way so things won’t be misunderstood. Words have a way of coming back to haunt us.

An Ill Wind is Blowing from the UN

The weather debate is about to reach pandemic proportions. How many of you really honestly believe we are in the middle of global warming? Now come on people, really think about it because our president is about to go to Copenhagen in December and sign the United Nations Climate Change Treaty that would cede US sovereignty. You need to look up that treaty and read what it says. Then go and look up The Supremacy Clause in the US Constitution (Article VI, paragraph 2). This clause establishes the Constitution, Federal Statutes, and U.S. TREATIES as the supreme law of the land. Concerns have been raised in the past that a particularly ambitious treaty may supersede the US Constitution. That time is coming pretty fast.

I’m 56 and I can remember all of the textbooks and teachers and scientists of the time saying we were headed toward a mini-ice age again. Then somewhere along the line during the eighty’s I suspect, the word got out that we were in the midst of global warming. The temperatures are rising, the ice caps are melting, there is a hole in the ozone. There is the greenhouse effect with carbon dioxide.

Guess what! When YOU breathe in oxygen YOU exhale (GASP!) CO2! Trees and other plants absorb the CO2 and they produce (GASP!) oxygen! All of God’s creatures breathe in oxygen and exhale CO2. Now with all of this talk about ‘carbon footprints’ just what is the government going to do? Tax the human race for breathing?

I was reading several papers (that were inadvertently humorous) about the amount of methane gas that one single cow produces in a day. It was astonishing. One standard full grown cow ‘emits’ up to 1000 liters of gas. So there is now talk being bandied about in Washington and in the Green Circles of taxing the cattle owners because their animals are contributing to the green house effect. What about the parents of little boys? Are they going to tax them because the kid has gone on a school trip and ate a bunch of hotdogs or whatever and spent the rest of the time grossing out the other kids with their gaseous emissions?

Is the New World Order going to tax the countries or states that have volcanoes and hot springs? When Mount St. Helens erupted in May of 1980 it blew a hole in the ozone that was phenomenal and the CO2 it belched out was record breaking! So is all of Washington state and all of Hawaii going to have to pay for being in the ring of fire?

So what happened to Global Warming? I am sure you are wearing long sleeves this week as I am, and probably have turned the heater on in the early morning. The hot cup of coffee is probably warming your hands as you read this. This may come as a bit of a surprise, the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998! And before that, the hottest years on record were 1921, 1931 and 1934. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures and the climate models put out by the climate warming gurus did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

The people in the state of Montana were probably wondering about global warming just last week when why were watching the temps plummet and the snow fall as they were standing in front of their fireplaces wearing their thermals.
So what on Earth is going on with our Earth? Climate change skeptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man’s influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming. They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is.

So I throw this challenge out to you, go to your library, grab an encyclopedia, get on the internet, call your congressman, I don’t care which, but check into the UN Climate Change Treaty. It is a nasty bit of business and does not have your best interest at the heart of it.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t recycle, you should. I’m not saying you should be wasteful and harm your environment. But you better wake up and smell that hot coffee you are holding in your cold hands because an ill wind is blowing and it is not the perfect storm.

Arthritis and Banks are both causes of Pain

As I sit here listening to the rain pouring down outside and hitting something with a loud insistent drip drop DRIP DROP!, I am feeling the pain. I have never felt so icky and not been sick. As the old folks say, the ‘Arthur’ is messing with my bones and ‘Ben’ and ‘Ty’ and ‘Mo” are my only friends. I have discovered that Tylenol will take the edge off the arthritis pain but it’s the Ben Gay and the extra little Motrin that will keep me pain free long enough to get some work done.

Arthritis is one of those things that only ‘old’ people get. Funny how 56 was so OLD when I was much younger and now that I AM 56, my brain doesn’t want to come to terms with my aching joints and muscles! My mother is getting a chuckle over all of this and my sister commented that I now walk like our grandmother did! Mamaw fell a few times in her life time as I have and I understand her fear of falling!

I read a lot and came across some articles about the Consumer Checking Account Fairness Act, which brings up another big pain! Have you ever found yourself waiting to get access to your money after you deposit a check? Banks commonly “hold” a deposited check for several days before crediting the money to your account. You could deposit a big check on Friday (even direct deposit), write a check later that same day, and have your check bounce because the funds from your deposit aren’t made available to you until Tuesday (for a local check) or much later (for a non-local check).

A federal law called Check 21 which went into effect in October of 2004, helps banks, savings and loans, and credit unions to process the checks you write faster, but it doesn’t require banks to shorten those inconvenient check holds. Banks don’t even have to count weekends toward the number of days a check is held, even though they clear checks on the weekends. So who exactly reaps the benefits from Check 21? Not necessarily you nor I, the average Joe banking consumer. The new law does not require banks to process deposited checks any more quickly than they do now. Thus, consumers did gain fast access to cash or the ability to pay bills in a timely manner. just yet.

Just what is this Check 21? Check 21 is sweeping federal law that takes away your ability to get back your original paper checks. Under this law, consumers are more likely to bounce checks and may find themselves paying higher bank fees. The complicated law gives some rights, but those rights depend on a variety of factors, including how the merchant and the bank decide to process your check.

It's frustrating to me when I get paid by direct deposit only from out of state banks. I do contract work and they pay me electronically. The money is supposed to be in my account on Thursday. I will check and it says it there but the funds are not accessible to me for 3 more days. Banks do handsprings to speed up the check-clearing and funds-transfer process on their side, but then treat their customers as if the bank has to wait for the horse drawn stagecoach to get there with the money.

I once had a bank tell me it was going to put a three-day hold on a cashier's check drawn on that very same bank. Another time that stands out in my memory was when we sold our house in Tupelo. The realtor wrote us a check on the exact same bank we were using and when we went in to deposit the check at a branch that we had used for nearly 20 years, we had to prove who we were! Plus they called the real estate agent that had issued the check to us! In the mean time, the mortgage company was waiting on their money and even though we ‘had it’ we didn’t have it because the bank would not release it until the prerequisite 5 business days had passed and they didn’t count the weekend.

Banks are a mystery to me and a necessary evil. They assume that everyone is kiting checks and bouncing and defaulting. But holding on to the consumer’s money in this electronic day and age of swiping a plastic debit card and it is immediately out of your account and into another is ridiculous. It’s just another way of keeping the consumers money for a little while longer and racking up those fees.

Too bad Tylenol and Motrin won’t clear that pain up!

Flapping my 'right' wings

The week before September 7th, several things happened that I thought I should write about. Some of it I started on and then hit the delete key and did away with it. It was cathartic action. Now that is a great word isn’t it? Catharsis…from the Greek language meaning to cleanse and purge. A more up to date definition in Webster’s Dictionary is 2 a : purification or purgation of the emotions (as pity and fear) primarily through art b : a purification or purgation that brings about spiritual renewal or release from tension 3 : elimination of a complex by bringing it to consciousness and affording it expression.

It seems that many people need a little catharsis when it comes to politics and our present administration, and I am including myself in this so don’t everyone jump on my little wagon at once to start beating me in the head. It is no secret that I am conservative about a lot of things. It is also no secret that I did not vote for the present administration. That was my right the last time I checked that I could vote for whomever or against whomever and I have exercised that right many times since I was 18 years old.

Last week I received an e-mail calling me a self indulgent right wing leaning writer and one of my friends accused me of being racist when I made the statement that if I had younger children in school that I would probably not send them on Tuesday, when the POTUS will be speaking. I have read the speech and it’s all well and good. He isn’t saying anything that any parent, teacher or school administrator has not been saying for years. And for that matter, if more parents would take on more responsibility for their kids education, Mr. Obama would not feel the need to go on television to speak to the kids. The government is not a baby sitter. The government should not the one that is responsible to make sure a child gets a meal and gets their school work done. The government should not have to be the one that teaches you that you need to wash your hands when you go to the bathroom or to cover your mouth when you sneeze or to stay at home when you are running a fever. What I took issue with was the poorly worded agenda of lesson plans that were sent down the pike. The White House has even said that it was poor worded so I was not making anything up.

The fact that our president is of mixed race is not an issue with me. Or have people forgotten that he is of mixed parentage. He is a man. And apparently he is surrounded by people that need to go back to school and learn how to write things in a more non-threatening way. Mr. Obama’s plan to make a speech to students is not new – President George H.W. Bush did the same in 1991, in a move that was opposed by Democrats. So opposition to things that sitting presidents do really does cross over the party lines.

Then there is this health care reform. I have had times of no health care especially when I was a small business owner and my husband was without a job. We just held our breath and paid the bills and tightened up the belt until we didn’t have any more holes in the belt! Then we have had had health insurance that wasn’t worth a penny that we paid into it because it didn’t cover anything we needed it to cover. And then companies put caps on how much they will pay. So if you are in a bad accident or are hit with a catastrophic illness, you better learn to suck up on the pain and heal yourself from within because they will be sending your sick butt home.

Do we need health care reform? YES WE DO? Do we need the government to run our healthcare? HELL NO! Since when did the government do a good job at running a business? Just think back to Katrina? How well did they do with that? People are still living in limbo waiting for the government help on that one. The other problem I have with the House health care bill H.R. 3200 is the government agency that will be given the authority to implement and enforce will be the IRS. Just what we need.

Think I am flapping my right wing leaning self-indulgent conservative self about that? Look up the bill and read it. It’s close to 1000 pages and you read for yourself what your congress probably has not read. You will find out exactly what having a catharsis means then. And while you’re at it, call up your old teachers and thank them for having the patience to teach you how to read and think for yourself and for knowing when to wash your hands.

The Demise of the Small town newspaper is at hand.

So my time as a writer for the Monitor is running out. The proverbial clock is ticking on the life span of the paper and the word has finally come down that when the clock strikes midnight of December 31 the Monitor Herald will become extinct. That is sad for a newspaper that is so old. And it’s sad for me and the other columnists that have been given the privilege of having our stories published week after week.

What exactly does a newspaper do anyway? What is its purpose in the grand scheme of things? To deliver the news to your doorstep…correct? Wrong! Perhaps decades ago that was the intent and purpose but the advancement of the electronic age took care of that. There is news to be found on every television station at most any time of the day now. There is the internet that gives even more up to date news information. The Newspapers are not in the business of selling you, the reader, the NEWS. They are about selling advertising and writers like me are just filling in white space between those ads.

That is a harsh thing for me to say about myself and other writers but it is the cold ugly truth. The consumers that buy newspapers don’t pay for news. They have never paid for the news. Newspapers make their money not from delivering the news but from delivering advertising on newsprint into people’s homes. Just like television stations don’t make money off of those weekly programs that we all love to watch and are addicted too. It’s those pesky ads that intrude upon our senses and plant the idea that we need to run to J.C. Penny’s and get some new linens for our beds or to go to Kroger for their 10 for 10 deals of the week. I used to work at both of the TV stations in our area and for a national advertising agency and I had to churn out creative story boards for commercials on a daily basis. It is a dog eat dog world in the world of advertising in both the video and print genre.

Now I can’t say what it costs to print a paper and deliver it to the paper boxes and to the post office but I dare say it’s a lot more than the .25 cents or .50 cents people have been paying. Think about it for a moment, and you will realize those paltry sums couldn’t come close to making up the cost of merely printing a newspaper and then delivering it by hand to a subscriber’s doorstep seven times a week, 365 days a year.

Nor can a company make money in 50-cent increments by sending employees out in gas-guzzling trucks down country roads each day or once a week distributing to hundreds of newspaper boxes over scores, perhaps hundreds, of square miles. I dare to offer that it may actually cost $25 to $40 dollars a paper to print and deliver just one paper that we have all had the luxury of paying about $21 to $28 dollars a year for.

I realized a few years back that times were getting tight with newspapers when they started going to a smaller type and a slightly smaller size and format. Little by little our newspapers and magazines have been shrinking. The comics, the way to lure younger people into reading a paper, started getting smaller. Then some papers, in the hopes that they would not offend anyone, started reporting what I call the ‘happy talk news’. Nothing too too controversial. After all, you don’t want to tick off the advertisers. The advertisers are the bread and butter of the papers. And I don’t want this to seem like I am attacking the businesse’s that buy advertising. Heavens NO! I used to be a business owner and I had to advertise to get new customers. I can’t begin to tell you how much I spent on print advertising trying to target my market.

Newspapers don’t have the comfortable monopoly position any longer. People get their news in many different ways now and that is what is leading to the demise of the smaller local papers. Young people don’t read any more like the past generations. Try as we might, it’s hard to grab the attention of some people unless its in a video format.

What will become of papers and journalists and writers in general? I don’t have a clue. I just know that I am a dinosaur that continues to evolve and I am not too technologically challenged. Perhaps the papers and reporters and journalists that survive will come out on the other side of the technology universe and be the better for it.

As for my writing, I may not be appearing in ink on newsprint for much longer but I will still have my internet blog and I thank the Monitor for giving me the venue to express my opinions. It has been a great learning and growing experience for me.

Now is anyone out there looking for a feature writer?