Uncategorized – Page 102

Heroes Deserve Better (Archives)

In Memory of Someone Very Special.

“Being a soldier is more than courage, it’s sacrificing yourself for something greater than yourself.” Unknown

A hero is defined as “a person who is admired for their courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities.” Soldiers are heroes in every sense of the word. They risk their lives to keep us safe. They fight against those who want to take away our freedoms and rights, many lose their lives in the process and some come home injured beyond repair both physically and mentality. These men and women are heroes and they deserve better.

How many of them come home and become an afterthought? I know of one who did not lose his life in battle, he survived those, but the inner demons or rather the aftermath of war were the battles he still had to fight even when his service in the military was over. A veteran is defined as “a person who served in the active military, naval or air service, and was discharged or released under conditions other than dishonorable,” or as I see it, it goes something like this:

A soldier is someone who “wrote a blank check payable to the United States of America for an amount up to and including one’s life.” Unknown

My friend, the soldier, came home intact. However, the demons he carried within him, would take its toll on his inner psyche. He used alcohol to drown out the voices but his mind and his heart wouldn’t let him forget. To make a long story short, he fell very ill and his organs started shutting down one by one. He was overseas at the time with no family and one friend to see him through his ordeal. He thought he was safe because the military would take care of its own but he thought wrong. He was just an afterthought in the grand scheme of things. He had done his duty for his country and he expected that his country would take care of him for services rendered but he was yet to find out that was far from the truth. As one person I spoke to told me, “Soldiers think they can run to us when they find themselves in dire circumstances but there is nothing we can do, he will have to find his own way out of it.” The “it” meaning his sickness notwithstanding his few months of life left to live..

I reached out to the powers to be in Germany but was told in no uncertain terms that there was nothing they could do. I asked if they could fly him home in one of their planes and that was met with a no. I spoke to the Embassy but was told that it would take months to get an approval and when I pointed out he didn’t have that, they said they were very sorry. The Germans saw him as a liability because he was an American and there was no help forthcoming from them. Flying him home on a commercial flight meant he would need an escort and it would cost an arm and a leg to do that. He spent the last month or so in and out of the hospital and towards the end was transferred to a hospice, only after I went to do battle for a dying man. He died there a week later.

“I stand ready not for politics or for leaders, but for my brothers next to me, my children at home, and for a country I protect.” Unknown

How often have we heard this phrase when referring soldiers who had served their country, “We are so grateful for your service.” It is a superficial phrase at best because there is no substance behind it. Heroes deserve better. They deserve to know that their unparalleled service to the country they love will be met with gratefulness not in words alone but with actions as well. It wasn’t the case for my friend. I am sure there are many out there who feel the same way. If you are in a foreign country, make sure you know what your options are if you find yourself in the same circumstances as my friend. The truth is you are on your own and you will have to fend for yourself as my friend did but the only problem was he wasn’t capable of doing that. He was too ill. Luckily for him, he had me to fall back on.

When I die and go to heaven to St. Peter I will tell, “One more soldier reporting for duty sir, I’ve served my time in hell.” Hal Popplewll CUSMG 1971-1979

Rest in peace soldier

A Beautiful Day

Photo by Karsten Sporenberg on Pexels.com

It is absolutely gorgeous today. The sun is shining and the sky is a vivid blue with not a cloud in sight. It is still a little cold but nothing a jacket and a pair of gloves can’t fix.

“I wondered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o’er vales and hills, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils; beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” William Wordsworth

And my soul took off. Well, not quite. It is still winter and just like the winter tease of “no real snow” this too might be short-lived and winter might just make a showing again. Anything is possible these days.

The fields are coming alive and the sound of birds chirping noisily in the trees is deafening to the ear but still a lovely sound. The planes droning overhead is soothing and the criss-cross patterns they are making as they make their way to wherever they are headed looks like a tapestry of some sort. On a day like today, everything seems touched with magic.

Spring says: “Wake up darling. It’s time for your soul to bloom.” Ave Mateiu

I see two rabbits sunning themselves oblivious of my intrusion into their space. They couldn’t care less because they’re preparing for bigger and better things to come. Soon it will be “baby season” and when summer rolls around there will be an abundance of rabbits scampering around as they did last year. It was and will be a sight for sore eyes.

Just be patient my heart whispers. It’s just a matter of time before the next season rolls around like clockwork and my eyes will be greeted with what is taking place below my feet right now. In the deep and dark areas, nature is breathing life back into what has lain dormant all winter. When the time is right, it will be mesmerizing of this I am sure.

Suddenly I spot two herons standing like sentinels close to the forest line. Several Native American Tribes look upon the heron as a “symbol of patience and good luck”. They believe that a Blue Heron sighting brings a message of self-determination and self-reliance. Hmm….I especially like the part about good luck. Fingers crossed!

It was a great walk and I’m looking forward to many more in the days to come. I know each new day will bring new gifts the earth below is hiding for just the right moment to present itself. It will lift and nourish my soul, no ifs or buts about it!

“She turned to the sunlight and shook her yellow head and whispered to her neighbor, “winter is dead.” Unknown

Have an amazing day.

Boredom

At first glance I want to say nothing since I am the “epitome of boredom” itself! If you had a chance to look into my life you would agree. Let me explain. I lead a very boring life. There is no longer the pressure to perform as I used to. I went from churning out articles at an accelerated pace to next to nothing. Nowadays, the “daily prompt” is about as much excitement as I get throughout the day! I wake up looking forward to the questions that someone puts out there for us mere mortals to come up with answers if we wanted to that is. It makes for some good reading!

Now if there is one thing I hate or I find totally boring is the weekends. Paradise, as I know it, meaning the fields are no longer my own at weekends. It is more like paradise lost during these times when the locals decide to get out there in droves and from greetings to the masses (what I call more than five people) the place loses its beauty or its thrill and for me that is absolute quiet and peace where my mind is allowed to take off into its imaginary realm. I usually stay indoors at the weekends and that is totally boring but I am finding ways to combat that feeling. Meditation and working on things I need to get down and on me as a whole is working fine for right now and if that goes down the drain, I’m sure I’ll find other things to keep me occupied. Boredom is in the mind as I usually say, change the mindset and you’ll be just fine.

Daily writing prompt

What bores you?

View all responses

PATIENCE (Archives)

“Patience is a virtue” a short phrase that means “waiting calmly is a good trait.” This was coined way back when waiting for anything to happen was normal and waiting patiently was considered a virtue rather than a hair pulling experience. Well, at least the English poet, William Langland, who came up with this phrase in 1360 thought so.

These days, patience is a learned virtue. At times it takes super-human strength to say, it is ok, I’ll wait a little while longer. The extreme could be waiting for something that never happens but promised it will. There are people in this world who think that showing up late is fashionable. I know someone or have known several people who showed up 30 minutes late for an appointment without so much as calling to say they are running late. This not showing up on time is stamped into their DNA so there is nothing you can do about it except show PATIENCE even if you have to grit your teeth and bear it. Needless to say, these people don’t have a permanent place in my life. They brought my patience level to the negative and it was time for them to go!

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” Leo Tolstoy

Both come into play when dealing with people who show disrespect for your time and your patience level. It’s not that they don’t know what they are doing, they DO KNOW and that is the truth of the matter. Would they like it if you showed up late or worse still did not show up at all? What would happen if the shoe was on the other foot? I guarantee you they wouldn’t tolerate it for one minute.

“Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind.” David G. Allan

Fine and good. However, these days my patience level is not where it used to be. Gone are the days of accepting it as a slight faux pas. These days, if it happens more than once, I am ready to close the door and move on. Patience is not my strong suit but than again why pull your hair out when in the end you’re the one who ends up with a bald spot and not the person who takes the laid back attitude to life. Believe me, patience is not all it has been cut out to be. Virtue or not, in the end your well-being matters, you matter and your principles matter. You don’t have to put up with it. That said, here are some quotes to lighten the topic.

“My doctor is concerned about my high blood pressure. I told him, well next time don’t leave me sitting in the waiting room for two hours.” Unknown

“My doctor told me to start killing people. Well not in those exact words. He said I had to reduce stress in my life, which is pretty much the same thing.” Unknown

“The fact that my entire body cracks like a glowstick whenever I move and yet refuses to actually glow is very disappointing.”

“My goal this weekend is to move only enough so people know I’m not dead.”

Tried this last weekend and it was pretty relaxing I must say.

“I MAY LOOK CALM —but in my mind I’ve already killed you twice.”

“Tell the negative committee that meets inside your head to sit down and shut up.” Ann Bradford

I did but it doesn’t work.

This one I like a lot. It made me laugh which is a good thing.

“I can only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow doesn’t look good either.”

If you’re the type of person who plays havoc with other people’s patience, STOP! Treat others as you would like to be treated and that should do the trick but if it doesn’t and you’re a hardcore and professional patience tester, I hope you get what you deserve.

Have an amazing day.

LOL! (5)

I thought this was funny but you may think different!

Two New Elements Discovered!: WO and XY…

From Christopher G. Worley, Los Alamos Laboratory

Two new chemical elements have recently been discovered. Here for the first time is a description of their properties.

Name: WOMAN

Symbol: WO

Atomic Weight: (don’t even go there!)

Physical Properties: Generally round in form. Boils at nothing and may freeze any time. Melts whenever treated properly. Very bitter if not used well.

Chemical Properties: Very active. Highly unstable. Possesses strong afinity to gold, silver, platinum and precious stones. Violent when left alone. Able to absorb great amounts of exotic food. Turns slightly green when placed next to a better specimen.

Usage: Highly ornamental. An extremely good catalyst for dispersion of wealth. Probably the most powerful income reducing agent known.

CAUTION: Highly explosive in inexperienced hands!

*************************************************************

Element Name: MAN

Symbol: XY

Atomic Weight: (180 +/- 50)

Physical Properties: Solid at room temperature, but gets bent out of shape easily. Fairly dense and sometimes flaky. Difficult to find a pure sample. Due to rust, aging samples are unable to conduct electricity as easily as young samples.

Chemical Properties: Attempts to bond with WO any chance it gets. Also tends to form strong bonds with itself. Becomes explosive when mixed with Kd (Element: Child) for prolonged period of time. Neutralize by saturating with alcohol.

Usage: None known. Possibly good Methane source. Good samples and are able to produce large quantities on demand.

CAUTION: In the absence of WO, this element rapidly decomposes and begins to smell.

Favorite Drink?

I don’t drink alcoholic beverages. It is just my preference and I don’t think it tastes great either! Tried it once in my late teens. It was a beautiful looking glass of something red, an almost glowing liquid with an umbrella and a slice of pineapple for added effect and the guy I was dating at the time ordered it not knowing that I didn’t drink. It came, I drank it like a fool and got myself drunk! That was my last and only time coming face to face with alcohol of any kind. I’ve been to places where alcohol was served but I always refused. A stick in the mud? Call me whatever but I have willpower except for cheesecake of course!

I stick to coffee in the mornings and fruit juices and water throughout the day. I love tea too and I’m discovering that there is a tremendous variety to whet every taste bud on the market. Alcohol out but anything that does wonders for the body as a whole is a definite in.

Daily writing prompt

What is your favorite drink?

View all responses

The Betrayal

Photo by Admar Kamosso Oficial on Pexels.com

It is mean-spirited, dictatorial and a betrayal of the worst kind. Throwing Zelensky under the bus comes easy to Trump because he wants to “make a deal” so long as he can say, “I stopped the war!” At what cost? It doesn’t matter to him and siding with the “bad guys” comes naturally to him as well.

The world is calling it a “disgusting betrayal” and rightfully so. The 47th president who is obviously in cognitive decline has openly sided with Russia and went so far as to say, “Ukraine should have never started the war.” Lest we forget, the war was launched by Vladimir Putin in February of 2022.

Trump didn’t stop there. He further added that Zelensky played Biden like a fiddle and called him, “a dictator without elections, Zelensky better move fast or he is not going to have a country left….Europe has failed to bring peace, and Zelensky probably wants to keep the ‘gravy train’ going.” What a bunch of BS!

He has conveniently forgotten that Zelensky is the victim here and Putin the aggressor but things like that are small peanuts to the man who thinks he is running the whole show. The tirade has gone viral signaling not only that the cuckoo has flown the nest but that it is never coming back! Every day something new of the unsavory kind but that is nothing new where Trump is concerned! It is showtime folks and it’s ALL about the “deal.”

Lord Have Mercy!

Don’t Chase (Archives)

“You’ve got to learn to leave the table when love’s no longer being served.” Nina Simone

This quote brought a smile to my face. How often have we done exactly that? How often have we held on when it was absolutely clear that no amount of cajoling or talking someone into whatever it is you want from them was ever going to change the situation. If that someone does not love you or has stopped loving you, MOVE ON! Learn to leave with your dignity intact.

Easier said than done right? When I found out that my husband of 17 years had been cheating on me something broke within me. I can’t explain it. I became numb. After it wore off, I went into the, “I’ve got to save this marriage mode.” The truth was there was no saving what was never there. When he chose to cheat, he broke the sacred bond between us, broke the trust into a millions pieces, disrespected me and declared our love to be a non-entity. How do you save something that was broken beyond repair? Still I sat at that table. I refused to leave thinking we could go back to a semblance of what was. I cried, I begged and even made a fool of myself but chasing him after he had done wrong only gave him more power over me. He didn’t see his wife or the broken woman before him, he saw someone he could manipulate and decided that he could have his cake and eat it too. When that didn’t work, he walked chasing greener pastures so to speak. Unfortunately or fortunately, cheating never pays and soon that “green pasture” turned into a desert and it was over before he could say, “Hello!”

Commitment is a tricky thing. Sometimes we look for it in all the wrong places. We latch on and even if all the signs tell us to tread lightly we rush in refusing to budge thinking that if we just waited long enough, something will give and sitting at the table of “no love” will turn into something glorious. The truth of the matter is as Matthew Hussey put it so succinctly,

“You shouldn’t try to sell a car to someone who’s in the market for a bike.”

I am learning that I’m NOT looking for the guy who wants to buy the bike, he can have it for all I care. I don’t think I’m even trying to sell a car. These days, I know that I don’t have to sell anything. I am good enough as I am, no selling required!

“Accept yourself, love yourself, and keep moving forward. If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down.” Roy T. Bennett

Have an amazing day.

Favorite People?

The people I like to be around with are those who cause very little stress, show up on time, are honest, show empathy, have loads of compassion but most of all they stand their ground and stick to what matters and don’t beat around the bush.

People who are kind and loving with laughter to share and you’ve got what my kind of favorite people are. Unfortunately, people have become jaded and such qualities are hard to find these days. Instead, there are those who think being cruel, putting someone down, cheating, slurs and behaving with no integrity are all part and parcel of good behavior. It reflects to the world we live in. Anything goes is the message and so we learn to adapt to a non-caring world.

My kind of “favorite people” are those who still stick to olde-world principles and do not budge when a storm rolls around and are still standing when it has long left the scene!

Daily writing prompt

Who are your favorite people to be around?

View all responses

A Power-Packed Speech

In his February 2025 State of the State address, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker gave an eye-opening and powerful speech that still resonates today. Only problem is that what he predicted back then is happening today and in the most horrible and disgusting fashion. The terror unleashed on the streets of Minneapolis and the killing of two innocent civilians, Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and ICU Nurse Alex Pretti, who was 37 at the time, by ICE agents makes for a sickening realization that something else is at work here and it is the rise of what Gov. Pritzker was talking about. It should send tremors down our spines because once that “evil” is awakened again, it is going to take tremendous force and loss of lives to put it back where it came from as history has taught us.

I wrote this piece after Governor Pritzker’s address and it speaks to the sign of the times.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker delivered his ‘State of the State’ address in Springfield Wednesday and although he spoke of many things, it was the last part that made many of us sit up and take notice. He was speaking to the heart of the matter.

Here is an excerpt:

“if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm….I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most… public praise on the Sunday news shows…..it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators.”

He went on to deliver what can only be called a punch to the gut without lifting one finger. It was eloquent, it was persuasive and it was more than powerful.

“The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame….I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country here…..The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here. They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.”

He further added:

“I just have one question. What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorites – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

All the atrocities of human history lurk in that answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.”

Nothing more needs to be said.

RIP Renee Good and Alex Pretti