Bulldozing the bullwarks

I have really scaled back my attempts at firing up the bulldozer to wade through the bullwarks of hypocrisy people keep throwing up, around, down and every which way.

I refer you here to the attacks on #45, two specifically.

1) He lied.

Yep. He sure did. So did #44, #43, #42, #41 and on down the line.

They lied.

Totally copacetic with you and anyone else calling out the lies. Truly am.

I just want you to do the same thing to the other presidents. Be fair. If you call out one, call out all of 'em. I do.

2) Deaths.

Much hullabaloo is being made over the C-19, or Kung Flu deaths and how #45 is handling the matter.

"A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush. Between 384 and 807 civilians were killed in those countries, according to reports logged by the Bureau."

I still hear no bitching about this. I heard little when it was going on and absolutely ZERO complaints from #44 fans. They sure raised hell when #43 was doing it. When #44 expanded the war, his supporters were so silent it was like the room went to Absolute Zero.

Which is more horrific? The deaths in the US from Kung Flu or the civilian deaths in other countries from #44's drone strikes.

How much control does #45 have over Kung Flu? None. Despite flat out orders around the nation for people to wear masks, social distance and etc, Kung Flu deaths happened. How is this #45's fault? People made the decision, one by one, to ignore the advice, instructions and orders from their elected leaders.

For those who do not know:

• My momma died from Kung Flu.
• I do not wear a mask, unless I have to go into a private location which requires masks. If I can avoid the place, I do.

How much choice did the civilians under #44 have when the drones came a'bombing?

I have never banned someone because of their political views. I have stopped injecting myself into these arguments online. My sanity requires it.

If you are one that rips into any president while putting on Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses to examine another president's record, then know this:

I am judging you. I am calling you a hypocrite. I am putting you in the same category as liars, politicians, lawyers, despots, tyrants. You sadden me. You are part of the problem. You are one who creates discord despite pleaing for harmony. You are a disgrace.

If you are one of the few who calls all of them out, who looks at all the records the exact same way, you I salute. You are honest, fair, forthright and you are actually trying to forge ahead and make a better world. Keep it up.

Just the facts, ma – OH HELL NO THAT'S A LIE

Some people cannot stand facts. Some people will not accept the truth. Some people reject anything that contradicts their perception of reality.

These people are easy to identify. They explode with vitriol when corrected. They get mad as hell when shown the truth. They lose all objectivity. They result to insults, pejoratives, ad hominem and other emotionally laden invective.

Eliminate these people from your life, both in-person and online. They choose to live a lie and you should not.

FACT CHECKERS 

The Internet has many different fact checkers these days. You can easily find the top ones. The granddaddy is Snopes.

 As I'm seeing it, those on the ends of the spectrum call fact checking sites "fake news," "liars," "biased," agenda-driven and so forth. The far right is more incensed, from what I see, than the left, but that could just be my perception. The attackers swear the fact checkers are not correct and make up stuff and get it wrong.

You can tell if one fact checker is correct by comparing that report to the report of all the other fact checking sites. When they all agree, then you are guaranteed to have the facts in front of you.

Some people will still reject reality, preferring to cocoon themselves in a comforting lie.

Eliminate these people from your life, both in-person and online. They choose to live a lie and you should not.

I'M FROM MISSOURI 

Not really, I am from South Georgia, but the colloquialism remains. Show the mistakes. Show me the error. Show me the bias. Show me where they intentionally distorted the record.

I'm not gonna wait. You (you being the fact-check haters) can't do it because it does not exist. Of course, the haters will say even my links proving my point cannot be trusted.

Some point to a mistake Snopes made some years back. The error was quickly corrected. Since then, no problem.

Someone usually then points out the Snopes founders got a messy divorce. Exactly how does that affect the website's ability to find and report facts? It doesn't. It is a communist baitfish (red herring) whose only purpose is to be a straw man to deflect the argument away from what is at hand.

Eliminate these people from your life, both in-person and online. They choose to live a lie and you should not.

LIARS ABOUND 

Be certain, liars abound. Every president (the right-leaning link proving this) I can personally remember has lied (the left-leaning link proving this) to the American public. Pick one. You got it coming from both directions.

He lied.

#44? He lied.

#45? He lies.

#46? The two main contenders to take office in January 2021 are both proven liars. Their record of lies is easy to find.

Of course, the supporters of these and other presidents deny this. Never mind the live and recorded video, live and recorded audio, transcripts and news stories that prove they lied. The supporters categorically reject this as media manipulation.

Even more amusing to me is how so many of these supporters at one time gleefully shouted "liar!" as they supported someone else.

Bernie Sanders is a great example of this two-faced, hypocritical showmanship. When running for pres, Bernie said his opponents should not be entrusted with the job of the leader of the free world. Now, that same opponent who months ago was not fit for the job is now the savior of the human race.

Who ya gonna believe?

Eliminate these people from your life, both in-person and online. They choose to live a lie and you should not.

CHECK YOUR FACT

FB has again launched a program to tag lies. When so tagged, a post will have a variety of fact-checking websites pointing out the truth. This is driving some people incoherent with rage.

Eliminate these people from your life, both in-person and online. They choose to live a lie and you should not.

DO YOUR RESEARCH

Hey, don't believe the fact checking websites. Do your own research. I do. Fact checking is what I do. I've done it for so long that it is now just a part of who I am.

A great example is the sex offender registry in California. So many people are saying this legalizes child molesting.

FULL STOP – Before I go any further, I tell you child molesters should be scraped with a cheese grater, taken offshore and trolled behind the boat in hopes of catching sharks. I'll buy the cheese grater, the rope, the boat, the gas and oil to make this happen.

Resuming - I went and read the law. Everyone claiming it legalizes child molesting has either not read the law or read it and chose to misinterpret the law. Again, I read the law. It says judges have discretion on whether or not to put SOME offenders on the sexual offender registry. If convicted, the person still faces all the rest of the penalties outlined in California law. I personally think the law is too broad. Regardless, child molesting is still illegal in California, at least right now.

Go. Read. Research.

When you do all this, then accept what you have learned as fact, whether you agree with it or not. Facts remain. Your opinion of the fact will not change it.

If you can accept the fact, regardless of your opinion, excellent. This is the way. If the fact, such as the California sex registry law, is something you do not like and can change, then do so.

This is the way. If you cannot accept the fact and instead must lie about it, then you are a problem and should be avoided.

If the truth hurts, yer living wrong. Accept the truth and it cannot hurt you any longer.

Of racism and emails

Crost my email desk several times a week are messages from various racist organizations. I did not sign up for these. I did not request them. I get 'em because I run a newspaper. I could mark them as spam and they'd get dumped in the trash folder before I ever see 'em. I do not do this.

SELF JUSTIFIED 

Before I go any further, lemme tell you this. These groups say they are not racist. Instead, they self-promote as heritage, rights, justice and a whole bunch other jingoist adjectives aimed at rallying the troops. This is how they self-justify. They are still racist. Any group that seeks to promote one group of humans OVER another is racist.

 Also, some of these groups are separatists. A separatist can be racist, but does not have to be a racist. A separatist says "we should be apart." Some say "We should be apart because we are better than the others." That's racist. Some say, "We should be apart, but we are not better than anyone else, we just want to be a distinct group." Not racist.

BUT WHY?

So why do I let these pejorative missives continue to come in?

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I can learn about these people. I can learn their tactics, what they try to do and how they think. In learning about them, I also learn how to counter them.

Here's another Bakerism for you - If you listen long enough, people will tell you everything they do not want you to know.

TRUTH

Every once in a while, my curiosity gets the better of me and I read one of the emails. It confirms, at least to me, these people just do not get it.

More to the point, they do not want the truth. They want to hide behind lies. If the truth hurts, yer living wrong. These folks are going to extreme measures in an effort to avoid pain. In doing so, they bring more pain on themselves.

  HATERS GONNA BE IDIOTS

It's easy to say they are misguided and some may be. It's more accurate to say these people are consumed by hate. By letting their hate rule them, they also let those they hate guide their thoughts. The haters are actually managed by the people they hate. Haters gonna be idiots.

 "No," you say? Then you tell me.

If these racists are so consumed with thoughts of how they are being mistreated by another group, where is their focus? If their attention is so riveted on the people they hate, then where is their energy directed? If they devote so much of their time and resources to building their hate, their cause and attacking the other people, then how much time do they have to pursue other activities?

  AIN'T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT

 I read the emails from these people. I sadly shake my head and delete the email. I shove their information into a mental file, drop that in a mental filing cabinet in a mental closet. Then I turn off the light and lock the door as I walk away. The information is there, if I need it to counter them later, but it is NOT going to occupy my thoughts. Ain't nobody but fools got time for hate.

 I'm not smart enough to hate anybody. I don't have the mental acumen to be a racist. I can't understand their lines of reasoning and thought. Frankly, I'm not investing the effort to understand them on that level.

For me, it's enough to know that reason, logic and real science is enough to disprove them. I'll keep getting their emails. Most of the time, I'll click the little box to left and hit delete.

Every now and then, I'll read one just to confirm to myself they continue to be idiots.

Th-th-th-th-that's all folks

Done. Finished. Ended. No more.

Afore any of y'all continue reading this diatribe, lemme tell you this is about my chosen career, avocation, love, source of income, frustration, joy and a central focus of my existence - writing. Mo' specifically, it is about me offering writing advice in public forums to beginning writers.

I'm done.

A bit of factual information first. It may sound like bragging and to some degree it is, but it needs to be said. For more than 30 years, I have made 100 percent of my income as wordsmith, a prose slanger, a verbal prostitute; I write you long time. Thanks to this career of mangling the English language, I have:

Crossed the nation four times.

Bought real estate.

Bought vehicles.

Met a bunch of celebrities.

Taken free vacations all across the South. (Yes, free).

Gotten into concerts, amusement parks and etc for free.

Written books and contributed to a whole lot more books.

Racked up 100+ awards for my work in communications, including one national award presented to one and only one person/outlet per year.

Met a whole lotta truly awesome, wonderful, incredible and amazing people.

Edified, torqued, annoyed, delighted and otherwise instilled just about any emotion you can think of in people around the planet.

Otherwise paid my bills for existing in this life.

Based on this, you'd think I have some idea of what I'm talking about when it comes to writing.

But every time I try offer advice to beginning writers, someone who has to write in their spare time and prays to get paid pops off and says I don't have a clue what I'm talking about. Hrm. On one had, a person who makes a living writing. On t'other hand, a person who tries to squeeze in writing amidst working a 9-5 job.

Who you gonna believe?

So yeah, I'm done with the public advice. I will still try to help, but it's gonna be private messages or otherwise outside of a public forum.

I do not have the time, patience nor inclination to deal with fools. If I try to engage them, they just drag me down to their level and beat me with experience. There's also the issue of arguing with a fool. Can you tell which one is the fool?

I freely admit what has worked for me may not work for others. A very real case of Yer Mileage May Vary (YMMV). I tell folks this.

So I'm done with being publicly shredded over something I absolutely can control.

If you are a beginning writer and, for some reason, want to hear rambling advice from a professional curmudgeon, editor, writer and arthritis sufferer, then contact me privately.

Scars

Mike Simms and I were talking. He was driving a new (to him) truck with Florida plates. Drove it for a while.

I asked if he was moving to Florida.

Nope. Truck used to belong to his brother. Their dad gave Mike the truck when his brother died.

Mike said it matter-of-factly. Just a fact. Tossed out there to give context.

Whoa.

How could he do that, I asked myself periodically over the next few years. His brother died and now it's just a conversational bullet point. No emotional investment. How?

I've marveled at other people who could do this.

Now, I know. Mom is gone now, over a month. Her ashes still sit beside my bed waiting for a trip to St. Augustine to be scattered.

Now I can tell people, she's gone. The Kung Flu and Kung Flu-driven pneumonia, compounded by the injuries in the wreck, killed her.  I can say it now without inflection or emotion.

Yeah, it still hurts. Yeah, I still cry when I think about it. Yeah, it's gonna hurt for the rest of my life, I'm sure.

Time scars the wound over. The violent slash through my being is closed over slowly. As the healing moves through, it leaves behind that scar, similar to the other scars I wear. Sometimes when the weather is particularly rough, some of those spots will ache. Most of the time, they don't. Many have faded and are barely visible now.

That part of me that was torn asunder so violently, it never will completely return to what it once was.

It will be stronger. When something living is broken and heals, the broken place is stronger than the original.

But it is not the same. Scar tissue is dense and tough. It covers a wound with extra protection.

The damage is still there, just somewhat hidden.

Some people see scars as something beautiful. Some see scars as marks of shame, something to be hidden, Others, like me, see scars as evidence of a life lived.

This scar is certainly the mark of a life. It is a reminder that she lived and I live.

As the years go by, my Mom scar will quietly fade as well. But it will always be there. When conditions are right, the old wound will make itself known. The pain will come roaring back.

A little rebellion

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.1 Unsuccesful rebellions indeed generally establish the incroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medecine necessary for the sound health of government." - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison,Paris, January 30, 17872
https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/little-rebellionquotation

While many will decry this and say it cannot be, the US has undergone a bunch of rebellions, some violent, since it first became a nation. The War Between the States is merely the biggest and most reported rebellion.

What is happening right now in Seattle is another rebellion. Whether or not I support all the aims of this movement is irrelevant. Whether or not I support this rebellion is irrelevant. It is a rebellion.

Among the demands of the largest and loudest group there:

We demand that prisoners currently serving time be given the full and unrestricted right to vote, and for Washington State to pass legislation specifically breaking from Federal law that prevents felons from being able to vote.

This, of course, won't hold up. It's been tried many times over. If there is ever a conflict between federal law and state law, federal authority and state authority, the feds win. We literally fought our bloodiest war ever over this. Admittedly, the War Between the States was over the right to keep and own other human beings as chattel, but that is still a break from federal law and federal control.

http://www.tampadispatch.com/seattle-protesters-take-over-downtown-set-up-chaz-with-raz-simone-using-stop-and-frisk-threats-to-keep-order/

If you read down a bit, you also get into their demands for even more socialism and government funding of everything while at the same time demanding less government.

We demand autonomy be given to the people to create localized anti-crime systems.

and

We demand the de-gentrification of Seattle, starting with rent control.

They also get racist.

We demand the hospitals and care facilities of Seattle employ black doctors and nurses specifically to help care for black patients.

No mention of where these people are coming from. Just a blanket demand, except not emphasized.

and

We demand the people of Seattle seek out and proudly support Black-owned businesses. Your money is our power and sustainability.
Then, they make a contradictory demand.

We demand that thorough anti-bias training become a legal requirement for all jobs in the education system, as well as in the medical profession and in mass media.

Good luck trying to make that happen in the media! Dunno why they are whining about that anyway.  The major outlets, except Fox, are on their side anyway.

As Mr. Jefferson says, a little rebellion is a good thing. It wakes up those in power and hopefully makes them re-evaluate and be more responsive to the needs of the people.

Getting a government that is more in touch with the people is something we certainly need. 

If yer gonna be a hoarder...

Certainly you've heard about hoarders. People who pack their homes beyond bursting with stuff, mostly garbage. You may even know one.

Mom was a hoarder. Oy vey.

I walked in today with another box of her hoard.

"BEN! Again?" said the ladies behind the counter.

Yup. Again. It won't be the last either. I'm slowly whittling down the stuff she left behind. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, the bottom of the box, the clear path to the other side or however you wanna put it.

Shag took care of part of the horde already. Jugs filled to the top. Whew.

I'm taking care of another part of the horde.

Today's tally, $25.50. Today's weight? According to the Internet, probably 45 pounds or so.

If you are gonna be a hoarder, there are worse things to have laying around. Mom hoarded coins.

I've already spoken about sorting coins with her and how much I want to do it one more time. That's not gonna happen. So, I sit and roll the stash she left behind. We're down to the loose pennies now. Those jugs Shag commandeered, pennies in whisky jugs. Those went to one of those automatic sorting machines that takes a percentage of the total.

I'm cool with that.

I have to admit I have thought about dumping all those pennies in a wheelbarrow and rolling that in to some place where Mom owed money. They'd have to take it. Pennies are legal currency in the US for all debts, public or private. But she was on good terms with the few people she owed money to, so that didn't happen.

She sorted money by age and type. I have a few steel pennies. I have one 1901 Indian head penny and a few rolls of wheat pennies. You can still find them every now and then. She also sorted the 100 percent copper pennies from the new ones that are mostly zinc. The good stuff is back in a safe deposit box. The others, the ladies at the bank took the rolls and made a deposit for me.

Probably have a handful left, maybe $2-$3 left to roll.

It made her happy to sort the mounds of change I brought her. That's why I did it.

Little things, like this, remembering her sitting there sorting and being happy the whole time, that's helping me get through this. It also hurts to remember it, because I'll never get to do it again.

Soon, I'll reach the end of Mom's hoard, except for the good stuff locked safely away. I've thought about keeping a roll or two because, well, Ma, but that's not her. It's not even a good representation of her. I know what she wants. Her instructions were explicit and said many times.

We're gonna have a party, down on the river. These rolled coins are going to buy drinks and food. We will celebrate her life in the way she wanted and she's paying for it, exactly the way she wanted.

Whining is not a path to peace

Search Results

Web results

At Mary's sort-of suggestion, I bought the book - 

How to Stay Human in a F*cked-Up World

.

The first sentence of the book opens with the author saying Trump was elected president. He then speaks briefly of his wife's then-current battle with cancer.

This immediately left a sour taste in my mouth (not about the cancer). As I read through the book, I learned the author was one of the organizers (at least he so claims) of the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

Sour went to revolting.

I'm still going to read the book based on the exerpts Mary posted. I have already gleaned some great information from it, including the phrase "Toxic Righteousness."

I bought this book because I was and am interested in the things he has to say about dealing with the pain and suffering of this world. I'm interested in what he has to say about dealing with other people.

I have zero interest in reading his entitled-ass (yes, he is entitled and very wealthy. As of the printing of the dust cover on the book, he works as a head honcho for a Google global outreach program.) whining and bitching that the world is not lining itself up to meet his expectations. Here's the Amazon blurb about him - Tim Desmond--an esteemed Buddhist philosopher who has lectured on psychology at Yale and leads a mental health project at Google--offers a path to self-growth, connection, and joy like we've never seen before.

Ironically, the book is aimed at the exact opposite - how to accept and be happy with the world when things do not go your way.

No matter how much good I may draw from this book, everything will be coated with the taint from the opening line. As I peruse further, I find more and more whines, I may not be able to finish the book.

WHINE ON

Whingeing or whining is common enough. I suspect most everyone has done it. Some may accuse me of doing it in this blog. You may even be correct. That everyone does it, does not make it right. It is an infantile attitude and one we all should put behind us.

Desmond says to look for the good things instead of focusing on the bad. As he explains early on, if you have a toothache, you will almost constantly wish you did not have the toothache. Now that you do not have one, how much time do you spend focusing on the LACK of pain in your teeth? That is certainly a worthy insight.

Desmond could use plenty of examples like this instead of complaining about government. So far each time he mentions government, always negative to this point, he spectacularly fails to find something good to focus on. On all the other miseries of life he discusses, he either finds something good to put his attention on OR explains how to let the negative exist, be accepted and by doing that, reduce the impact.

I prefer the way Frank Herbert put it:

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

BUDDING BUDDHA

Like Desmond, the more I learn about Buddhism, the more I like and appreciate it. I hope this book brings me a greater understanding of this way of living and mindset.

I say this as a Pentecostal evangelist.

There is no contradiction.

As Dennis says, "Buddhism is a worthwhile adjunct to any faith because it is a philosophy rather than a religion in itself."

Buddhism, as I understand it, is learning to accept that which we cannot change and change that which we can. It's core structure is similar to Christianity, i.e. love others unconditionally. Buddhism, as I understand it, lets the individual decide for himself about a Higher Power.

The object of Desmond's book is to help people be at peace with themselves first and then be at peace within an ever expanding circle. In that regard, it is exactly what the Bible teaches.

Maybe I'll finish this book. Maybe I won't. Either way, I will be accept it and that is what Desmond says is the important part.

Counting the various things - A Ma story.

Done something unusual past few evenings as I've sat in my recliner and watched animal documentaries.

I counted.

Most of you are saying "That's unusual?"

For me, it is. When I take cash deposits to the bank, I always add it several times. I frequently come up with different sums. I take the most common result and list that. I hand the cash over to Mindy, Connie, Roshunda, Jessi or Rosemary and try not to wince as they count it.

Half the time I'm right. Half the time, I'm not. Not kidding either. Ask the ladies next time you see 'em.

"It's simple math!" you exclaim. Anyone can do it.

Apparently not.

Yanno what is simple? Writing. Writing these posts, my newspaper column, the reports on various happenings in the community, research papers and more. Writing is simple.

"Yer crazy, Baker!" you exclaim.

Nooooope. If you can speak, you can write. The process is the same. In one case words fall out of your mouth. In the other, the crawl from your fingers. The same brain runs your mouth and hands. The same brain runs your language center.

Anyway, I counted. More specifically, I counted change. I then rolled that change into tubes and dropped each tube into a bag at my feet. I hope the count is right.

Mom collected money. Not as a serious investor, but as a hobby. A few silver dollars, half dollars regardless of the metal content and some silver dimes. One of those dimes I got in 1984 at the Moultrie Dairy Queen. I got my change and for reasons unknown, I looked over the coins and saw one was a Mercury dime. Gave that to Ma and she put it away with the rest.

She left behind God only knows how many pennies. She dropped pennies into my empty half-gallon whiskey bottles for years. Do you know how much a half gallon of pennies weighs? Too much, that's how much. Oy. Do you know how much it is worth? Not nearly enough to pay for the expense of picking the damned bottles up and trying to get the pennies back out.

Of more recent times, she collected commemorative quarters. She was always excited when I showed up with a quart can of change. She asked if I'd bring her the quarters from the office too. Every so often I did and she was excited again. I did not do it every week, although I could have. I don't think she ever bothered to think about how many quarters run the through the office each week.

Robin drops a stack of quarters at the bank every week from the many vending machines across the county. Not much from each machine, but they add up.

I did not take them each week because, well, Ma could not afford it. She worried about paying her vet bill for her two dogs every month, worried about the power bill and more. She paid for the quarters she got from the office and stuck most of them back. Money out of her pocket. My spare change, in the can, I just gave it to her.

I sat and helped her sort the money. Eagle quarters in one pile - didn't want them. Bicentennials in one pile. Commemoratives had to be sorted into quart bags and labeled. Old pennies went in one bag. New pennies, nah, to the bank with them.

It made her. very, very happy to sit there and do that. She was even happier that I helped, and that's why I did it.

Now, Ma is gone on to whatever comes next. Her coins, at least the common currency ones, they went to the bank. The money will go to help settle her estate. Shag and I agreed, the quarters will be worth 25¢ each for so many years to come. None of her grandkids are interested in coin collections. The very few other things she left, they are in a safe deposit box at the bank.

It's just money.

But the sorting, even now, that's not just money.

Oh how I want to walk back in her house again with a can of change and help her sort it out. Just one more time, please?

Remains of a life

Remains of a life

As we continue to sort Mom's house, discarding some, taking some home, setting some aside as donations and some to sell I am struck by a few things.

She was quite organized, not to the point of OCD. She had things put away carefully. Her financial records are easy to go through. Her personal effects, equally easy to sort. Her eldest son did not inherit this tendency. My filing system tends to be piles that eventually get moved into boxes.

At the same time, it is easy to see she forgot what she had. Some stuff was put away when she first moved into the house and never touched again. Sometimes, she'd mention these things in passing, wondering where they got off to. Never seriously concerned enough to go look for them.

I already knew she was forgetting. Not dementia, but just age that causes us all to forget. She had a safe she could not open. She swore the safe held things it did not. The third time we unpacked the safe, I recorded everything with the video recorder on my phone. Everything. She continued to insist the previous two searches never happened.

I figured it was only a matter of time before she wanted to unpack everything again. Instead, I'd show her the videos as proof we did the search and came up empty handed.

The 4th search never happened. Never will now. I am sad that we won't go through the safe again and happy that I have at least some video of her. 

She hated having her picture taken.

As her stuff is sorted into piles, I look over things. I am seeing the remains of a life. As a writer, I see stories of triumph and tragedy, change and dogged determination to resist. As her son, I see myself (literally me in some pictures) in what she kept, like my elementary school student achievement book. As a brother, I see Shag in these things too. As a human, I see pictures of her, Dad, Shag and me. None of this childish defacing the picture to excise Dad.

I see what she treasured, at least in terms of material things, I see what didn't matter by the conspicuous absence of other stuff. 

I see things others cannot because she and I lived them, together, just the two of us.

Sometimes, me or someone else will grab something and wonder "Why did she keep this?" The answer is simple. It brought her pleasure to see it, to hold it, to have it. Her porcelain hummingbird collection is one of those pleasures for her that mean nothing to me. These things, we are selling. Either direct through an estate sale or through a shop in downtown Ashburn. I hope someone will buy and enjoy that stuff as much as Mom did. 

I find things I want to keep. Some I hang on to. Some I just don't. Her name tags from her jobs. I want them, but why? Her jobs did not define her. I let it go. Who will want them after I am gone? No one. It will just be more stuff to throw away and whoever has to clean up after me will have plenty of that already.

I am also thankful she was not a hoarder. Last year, about this time in fact, I was south of Tallahassee several times a month cleaning out the home of a hoarder. Call the hoarder J, who was also Mom's best friend. J had straight up piles all over the house with barely enough room to walk through them. We filled a roll-off dump trailer twice with debris.

We've ordered a dump trailer for Ma's house, mostly for the yard trimmings we have to get rid of as we trim the hedges. Part of the work to get the house ready for sale. I'm rough guessing here that actual trash in the house is less than a two roll out carts and almost all from trash cans in the house. Sure, we're tossing more, but it doesn't qualify as trash. Call it the detritus of a life instead; detritus is a vital component of a healthy forest. 15-year-old tax records, some lightly stained clothes, now expired food, etc. are going into the dump.

Some people are wondering how I'm doing, especially as I go through the house. Some anger, as expected. Some sadness, as expected. But for the house, nothing really. I was not invested in the house in any way. Didn't grow up there. She only lived there for about 10 years or so. It was her home, but not mine.

We were there Sunday. Danielle came over and brought Bolt, her dog. He would not get out of the car until I coaxed him out. He was not happy going into the house. He climbed on my lap when I sat down and looked up at me softly whining. D. has kept Bolt since the accident and now will spend his remaining years there.

"Yeah, I know Small Dog. But she's not coming back."

The house increasingly is just a structure, hollow, void and empty. Bolt understood this. The house is just a place to keep stuff, as George Carlin observed years ago. What makes it a home is the people who live there and how you feel about them.

Without Ma there the place, to explain the whys, whens, whats, whos and hows, it's all just stuff. It is the remains of a life and it grows increasingly cold and distant without her to animate it. Memories, shifting, fragile and unreliable, are nothing more than a poor version of life support that must also end some day.

Poppin' and hurtin'

In her later years, Ma was still feisty, but deeds could no longer match words.

"Imma swat you," she said in minor annoyance over something somebody did. It was never serious. She was not really angry. It was just her reply to gentle ribbing.

She sometimes delivered, never hard, never mean. If you didn't know she was doing it, you might miss it.

Then as the arthrititis spread, she couldn't even do that much. It literally hurt her. She forgot a few times, early on as she grappled with that disease.

POP!

Her hand jerked back at lightning speed as she clutched it to her chest. "De am uh," she'd swear. For being a Damn Yankee, she certainly adapted to the Southern Accent, as proven by her ability to put three syllables into the single-syllable swear word "damn."

Those around her caught on to this immediately. Which made the game even more fun.

"G'head. Hit me. Gonna hurt you worse than it'll hurt me."

Stubbornly, she tried it a few times.

"De am uh!"

Real parents know physical discipline certainly is worse on the parent than the child. But that is a mental and emotional pain. This time, for Ma, it was physical.

Those hands that once wielded a cabbage knife with speed and precision, they couldn't any more. I watched her take a chicken and split the breast perfectly down the middle more than once. She tossed 50-pound cull watermelon with ease.

She once owned a .22 revolver (stolen and sold by someone she thought was a friend) and could keep tight groups. When she still lived in Tallahassee and was followed home one evening, including having said follower beat on the garage door, she decided it was time to rearm. I bought her a .380, compact, low recoil and still deadly.

She moved to Tifton and came to Ashburn for a gun safety class. She could not shoot the gun. The recoil simply hurt too much. She passed the gun back to me.

In her last few years, it took two hands to hold her giant coffee cup.

She often had to wait in a parking lot for a kind stranger to come crank her car. She couldn't turn the key in the ignition. Yeah. That gave me REAL cause for worry.

Cooking was a serious chore if it involved moving anything bulky. When we had family dinners, my clan arrived early to help cook. Whoever was there also helped clean up. She complained about both "I can do that!" and of course, she couldn't. We just ignored her and continued on.

"Ya need to let us do this," we all said when we couldn't ignore her any more.

"I want to do it. I need to do it for myself while I still can," she replied.

That's an attitude most people will agree with.

Everything except the buzzard

As noted before, Mom was my greatest cheerleader and a gentle critic. As all good parents do, she found need to correct, punish, discipline and express reservations and disappointments. She also looked for the good, even when it came to things she'd prefer to not experience.

Ma and I were over at Shirley and Elton's place in Athens once day. We lived in Athens for a while. Shoan, my cousin whom I called Pooh, and I were outside. I was maybe 4. A snake was in the driveway. I think I told Shoan to stand back and I charged up and stomped the snake to death in bare feet.

The snake was red, yellow and black banded. For those who do not know, the coral snake (a species of cobra and the most venemous snake in the US) and the King snake share the same colors, just in a different pattern. You tell 'em apart with a simple rhyme.

Red to black
Fangs they lack
Red to yellow
Kill a fellow

Coral snakes do not have fangs, but the rhyme works. If red and yellow bands touch coral snake. Red and black touch, King. Coral snakes are also not supposed to live north of the Fall Line according to biologists. According to biologists, canebrake rattlers are not supposed to live South of the Fall Line. How that big canebrake I ate years ago got to Turner County is a mystery.

Shirley and mom panicked. She had to make siue I was not snake bit. Shane, Shoan's older brother, collected the deceased and stored in a jar. He had it for years. May still have it.

A few years later down on the farm, Rodney and his family lived in the house in our front yard. Rodney and I were inseparable while he lived there. One day we spied an oak snake in a pecan tree. We got a ladder, knocked the snake out and killed it. With Rodney's dad Roger right behind us laughing his head off. We burst in saying "We killed a rattlesnake!" Mom was, well, less than enthusiastic but still proud of Roger and me.

I had a Daisy lever action BB gun, not a Red Ryder. It packed enough punch to kill small birds. I proudly walked into the house one morning holding one of the small birds that showed up every year. I held it by one of the toes. Mom congratulated me on my first kill as a hunter.

She was the first person I called on the phone when I killed my first deer. I was in Alabama at the time.

"Hey Ma."

"You got one!" she said, automatically knowing I'd killed a deer. She had that momsense thing.

"Nope. Two!"

"I am so thrilled! Save me some," she said.

Her favorite meat was wild rabbit. She was genuinely excited any time I came home with some hasenpfeffer.

One day we had a meal of mixed game, birds, rabbit and probably others. "Benjamin did all this," she said proudly as we sat down to the meal. Well, she cooked it. I killed all the critters we ate.

She put up with all kinds of critters in her freezer, land, air and water critters. She drew the line at one.

The buzzard was just too much.

Yeah. I shot a buzzard and threw it in the freezer. I wanted to show it to my best bud Rusty. Note here I have no sense of smell. It was burned out when I walked through a cloud of anhydrous ammonia.

Ma smelled it as I walked through the house to go plop down in my chair.

Mom did not cuss very much. She used up a year's worth as she told me to get that ______ ______ ______ _______ buzzard the _____ ________ ______ out of her freezer and take a shower. She threatened to burn the clothes I was wearing. Years later she told the story and laughed about it.

Whatever accomplishments I manage to achieve from now on, I'm going to reach for the phone to call her. Then I'll remember she won't answer any more.

Because words are what I have and what I was given

Mom loved to read. She was quite upset when the Bookmobile in Colquitt County was shut down.

For those who don't know, the Bookmobile was a converted RV lined with shelves. Two librarians loaded it every day and drove out into the county visiting farms and rural places. People would climb aboard, pick out books to read and taken the books inside. When the Bookmobile came back around, the books were swapped for something else to read.

The ladies quickly learned what the patrons on the route wanted to read and made sure to stock that.

Mom and Dad both made sure Shag & would read. They read books to us regularly. Mom delighted in telling people a story about when I just a munchkin, not quite able to read..

Dad would get out of his chair, book in hand. His destination, the bathroom where he'd sit, attend to Nature's call and devour a significant portion of the book. If I managed to see him getting up, I'd scramble to find a book and race ahead to the bathroom, taking the throne before he could.

I remember seeing a picture of me on the porcelain pony, book in hand. I haven't seen it in years. Maybe it will turn up as we sort stuff.

My favorite book when I was small was "He's Your Dog Charlie Brown." Yes, a movie by the same name exists.

Mom said I'd grab the book and come running to her or dad saying "Weed T'wown." And they read. They read it exactly because after a while I had it memorized. A mistake was quickly called out. Decades later one of my Christmas presents was an original edition He's Your Dog Charlie Brown. It's not the one I had, but it means just as much. It means more now, cause Mom won't have any more Christmases in this world.

Mom read about anything she could get ahold of. She particularly like Harold Robbins and John Steinbeck. I don't get that, but I also don't have to understand. I like HR, not JS, but given the graphic nature of some of HR's scenes, I can't understand why Mom liked it. Maybe she skipped those parts.

In later years she stopped reading fiction and switched to nonfiction. I asked her why.

"I know what's going to happen," she said. She'd read so much, fiction writers could not surprise her or deliver the level of intellection stimulation she was after. Nonfiction, even if she knew the outcome, held details she might not know. That made it worth reading.

She was also well-versed in the Bible. Jehovah Witnesses eventually stopped coming to our house because of how much she knew. She'd ask questions and pose situations they could not or would not answer. She made them more than a little uncomfortable.

Make no mistake - love of reading is a gift. It has to be given early and reinforced regularly. This love of reading includes the flip side, a love of learning. Mom gave us this gift. Our family loved to read so much Shag taught himself how to read, with the help of Sesame Street and the Electric Company. Aunt Ginger (his kindergarten teacher) was surprised when he was reading. Mom wasn't.

I'm hard pressed to put a finger on the greatest gift she gave me, not because I can't find it, but because I cannot see through these tears to type it out. Give me time and I'll get it out. Certainly this love of words and learning has to be near the top.

Meantime, her gift of the love of words has gone a long way to shaping me into the person I am today. You can accurately pin many titles on me and she gets credit for starting me on those paths. No one gets more credit for Ben Baker the writer, the author, the reporter than she does.

Firm

7 days gone, now.

She was a woman of firm convictions. She was not easily shaken from those beliefs either.

Back when Shag I were little, she had portraits done by a photographer in Moultrie. The lady was lesbian. How Ma knew this, I dunno. This was in the 70s, when same-gender attraction was not accepted. In the Deep rural South, it could amount to a death sentence.

She didn't care. She was more concerned with who the person was.

Over the years she met more people with a same-sex attraction. Didn't matter to her. What mattered was how well the person did with what they had. Very Dr. Martin Luther King right there.

Aunt Jeanne asked what Mom would do if one of her kids turned out homosexual. (We are not.) "I'd love him just the same." Aunt Jeanne said she was not sure she could do that.

She didn't care about skin color, nationality or other such things. If she welcomed you into her house, you were family.

I like to believe I share that outlook.

For someone who had such an open mind about sexual attraction, I find it odd that she hated porn. A Playboy in the house was ... let's not go there. She burned all that kind of stuff if she found it. A few months before she had the wreck and so forth, the topic somehow got into porn. She still hated it. "They (the women) are all on drugs anyway."

I didn't bother arguing with her.

She was quick to tell people, My House. My Rules. If you don't like it, leave. A distant cousin had a falling out with his parents. He moved in with us for a few months. He's now living in Mobile, I think, and is a woman and a hairdresser. This cousin did get fed up with the rules for living in her house and moved out.

That attitude got stronger over the years. By the time she moved to Tifton, she'd lived along so long she did not want anyone in her house more than a few hours. That included her two sons and grandkids.

She generally kept beer in the fridge for Shag and I. She did not mind people having a drink in her house. She kept a bottle of wine in the fridge too. But if you got drunk, as the brother of a family friend found out, you got the full Suzy attitude about that.

House rules. That's an attitude I inherited for sure. My place, my rules. Ya don't like it, you ain't gotta be here.

It came around to bite her too, She was at one place we lived and made some remark about the house.

"Ya don't like it, don't come back," I said. She knew I meant it.

That was the end of that subject, permanently.

It took her a long time to adjust to the reality that her first grandson has Down Syndrome. She so wanted to blame someone for that extra chromosome. Her desire to get up in someone's face about it and shout them down was almost palpable at times. She still loved Jesse and time allowed her to come to grips with his disability and accept him for who he is.

One day down at the house in Tallahassee, Jesse put some Silly Putty on the back of a chair.

She exploded. Mt. Vesuvius all over Jesse.

I stepped in.

Nope. Stop. "He does not understand."

She stopped, on him. She sat down in her chair still complaining.

"Hey. We can leave and we don't have to come back," I said as I scraped it off.

That stopped most of the complaining.

"I never had problems like that with you and Shag," she said.

"We also have IQs over 150," I said.

Reality slapped her across the face with that one. She started crying and apologizing.

Over the last few years, I stopped trying to convince her of things. I just let it slide by. She became forgetful. I quit reminding her as it irked her. I just let it ride. I let her talk about anything she wanted to talk about. If I had evidence proving her wrong, it stayed with me. It made our time together enjoyable.

I do not like the fact our last conversation was when she was in the rehab center in Tifton. She complained about the place, calling it a "hell-hole." But I do like the fact that we talked about what she wanted to talk about. The last time I saw her in person, it too was a good visit.

I hugged her gently (her shoulders also caused her a lot of pain), kissed her forehead and said, "Call if you need me. Love you Ma."

"I will. And you call me if you need me. Love you."

Anyone got the telephone number to Heaven?

Your encouragement is helping me get through this. You are the wind beneath my wings. Again, Lori and Allison are the reason I started this. Momma is the reason I continue.

Mom was not much liked by Dad's side of the family.

I think the reason was she had opinions that did not sit well in deep South Georgia. Her biggest run-in with was Mickey, Dad's brother and my uncle.

Dad & Mickey went into business together farming. I think Dad did most of the work. I know I did a lot more work on the farm than Mickey's kids. Mom also worked on the farm far more than Aunt Ann.

Summer always meant watermelons. Watermelons are hot work. Mom got so good grading watermelons coming down the conveyor belt she could tell you within a pound what each one weighed. Telling a ripe one from a green one, I think she could almost do that blindfolded. She stood there in the space between the trailer and the conveyor going into the truck, mercilessly culling the lot.

One year, Dad & Mickey got a government contract for watermelons. The inspector said Mom was tougher grading out the culls than he was.

Along with the heat comes something we call bear caught. It is heat exhaustion. You can get swimmy headed, puke, pass out, etc. Generally it is not too dangerous, provided you find a spot to sit down and cool off while drinking plenty of water. In rare cases it can lead to a hospital visit and a few people have died from it.

I got bear caught, as I usually did at least once every summer. Me & heat do not get along. Ma told me to hit the shade and rest. Mickey, whose own kids were nowhere to be seen, extremely objected to this. Ma got up in his face, told him where the road was and walked off. Uncle Mickey, a hothead to begin with, found that about as intolerable as anything he'd ever come across.

Dad pulled up. Mickey corralled him into a truck. They pulled off to the side and spoke in the truck, AC running, for a good 10-20 minutes. UM stormed off the field. So far as I know, he and Mom never spoke to each other again. Dad made it abundantly clear where the road was as well.

Ma fired some people too. When they complained to Dad, he said "She told you where the road is."

She held some opinions that were deeply rooted in her Catholic upbringing. That was another reason others did not care for her.

Oddly enough, in a time and place where women were expected to "know their place" she didn't care. Raised by a single mother, Ma knew what a determined woman could do and could do it without a man.

She knew who she was. She didn't much care what other people thought of that. Another strike against her. But for those who bothered to learn and could get past that abrasive exterior, they found someone who would be there no matter when and no matter why.

She found who she thought were friends closer than a sister. When she & Dad started having trouble and later got divorced, she felt she was abandoned and betrayed by many of them. In later years, I got to talk with some of her friends from that time. None of them said they were upset or held anything against her. They were, honestly, mystified that Mom broke off all contact.

That was her. If she felt she was wronged, game over. The only person I know she eventually reconciled with was her brother, Buddy, who lives in Parhump, NV. She even spoke of that reconcilation more than once. She said Buddy killed their mother (metaphorically, not literally) but she had to get past that because he is/was her brother. Buddy grew close to her as well over the past few years.

Sher also raised her sons to be independent thinkers and not care much what anyone else thought. Do your best and if other folks think that is not enough, they have a problem. She didn't say that so succintly, but she came very close to it many times.

Grandma always treated Mom well. Ma called her Ma. When Grandma was dying the personal care home, Mom went to see her. Grandma very much appreciated that.