Category: Current Issues

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Here’s something to help our own

I received this in an email and I had no idea until I read it.  This is what I keep talking about when it comes to helping our own instead of everyone else in the world.  This makes sense!

In our current economic situation, every little thing we buy or do affects someone else and perhaps even their job. So, after reading this email, I think this lady is on the right track… Let’s get behind her!!

My grandson likes Hershey’s candy. It is marked made in Mexico now. I do not buy it anymore. My favorite toothpaste, Colgate is made in Mexico now. I have switched to Crest. You have to read the labels on everything.

This past weekend I was at Kroger. I needed 60W light bulbs and Bounce dryer sheets. I was in the light bulb aisle and right next to the GE brand I normally buy was an off brand labeled, “Everyday Value”. I picked up both types of bulbs and compared the stats – they were the same except for the price. The GE bulbs were more money than the Everyday Value brand but the thing that surprised me the most was the fact that GE was made in MEXICO and the Everyday Value brand was made in – get ready for this – the USA in a company in Cleveland, Ohio.

So throw out the myth that you cannot find products you use every day that are made right here. So on to another aisle – Bounce Dryer Sheets….yep, you guessed it, Bounce cost more money and is made in Canada. The Everyday Value brand was less money and MADE IN THE USA! I did laundry yesterday and the dryer sheets performed just like the Bounce Free I have been using for years and at almost half the price!

So my challenge to you is to start reading the labels when you shop for everyday things and see what you can find that is made in t he USA – the job you save may be your own or your neighbors! If you accept the challenge, pass this on to others in your address book so we can all start buying American, one light bulb at a time!

Stop buying from China. . . . . (We should have awakened a decade ago……)  Let’s get with the program….Help our fellow Americans keep their jobs and create more jobs here in the U.S.A. !!!

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Well it’s time to get the garden ready

It’s the time of year to start getting the garden ready to plant.  I have to till it up real good since it has been disked to break up the clots.  Then after Easter, I’ll start planting.  We always plant a big garden so that we will have plenty for ourselves and also so we can give to those we know of that are having hard times because of the economy.  We have to look out for one another now that so many are affected with job layoffs and so many foreclosures around here.

Of course, we ask for nothing in return and in fact, a lot of the people we help come and help in the garden too.  Some of them have requested to plant some things that they like too so they can help others also.  It has sort of turned into a community garden with a lot of love put into it.  God blesses us every year with a great harvest and it’s good to help those in need no matter if they help in the garden or not.  Our whole nation needs to be looking out for each other more than we have in the past several years and maybe we won’t get in a mess like we’re in again any time soon.

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My son already has a job when he gets out

With the economy as bad as it is, I was so afraid that my son would not have a job when he got out or be able to find a job.  Luckily the carnival that he was working for said that they would be glad to have him back.  Now I don’t have to worry that he will end up on the streets homeless.  So very many people that have never been homeless before are now looking at the possibility of becoming homeless or have become homeless because of losing their job and their home too.  Foreclosures are everywhere and it’s not looking like it will get any better anytime soon unfortunately.

President Obama is trying to find new ways to jump start the economy with stimulus packages and bail out packages for banks and major car manufacturers but what about us.  The stimulus package is supposed to help each state create new jobs to ease the unemployment.  I sure hope that it works that way too.  Everyone is suffering to some degree between gas prices raising and falling only to go right back up, groceries costing more and money being stretched farther than ever before and even attempting to stretch it farther than possible a lot of the time.

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I have a hard time understanding this

Our world is so full of hate and I have a hard time understanding this.  People killing innocent people just because they lost their job or kids killing classmates in school because someone picked on them.  How can this be?  Why has it become so easy to take a gun and take someone else’s life?  Sure if someone is threatening to harm you or your family then you have to do what you have to do but these people are killing people that have done nothing to them.  Here’s an example of what I’m talking about that just occurred in Alabama.

Ten people have been killed and several injured across two small towns of Samson and Geneva in Alabama after a shooting incident by a gunman. The victims include the gunman and the wife and child of a sheriff’s deputy.

The gunman started his killing spree in a gas station in Samson after 5 p.m. Eastern Time and his rampage ended 12 miles away at the Reliable Metal Products plant, a manufacturing plant in Geneva. According to a report by CNN from Alabama state Senator Harri Anne Smith, who represents Geneva County “he [the gunman] was shooting at just ordinary people going about their business”.

The gunman was identified as Michael McLendon, who once worked at the Reliable Metal Products plant. He took his life at the plant after an encounter with the police. The victims include six adults and a child. The investigators are not sure what caused this catastrophic event to take place. Samson and Geneva are two small rural towns with a population of less than 5000 in Alabama near the Florida border.

Life is precious.  No one knows why this person when on the shooting spree that took the life of a small child in the rampage this man when on.  Then he took the cowards way out and killed himself.  If his life was so terrible, why didn’t he just take his own life and let the innocent people live their lives?  No one can give an answer to that question unfortunately.  Maybe we need to teach our children just how precious life really is because somewhere along the line, that seems to be a lesson not enough people learned.

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I have made my decision

I am not going to get the truck out of the tow yard.  If my son loses it, then he loses it.  He did this to himself and he has to realize that at some point in time, you are responsible for your own life.  I have helped him too much in the past I’m afraid and now he expects that every time he gets in a jam, Good Ol’ Dad will come to the rescue.  Well I can’t do that anymore.  I have to let him fall flat on his face and hope and pray he is man enough to learn to stand back up on his own.

My wife wants me to get it out but I can’t.  I understand her point of view which is “If he doesn’t have a car, then how can he get a job and get back and forth to work?”  I had a cousin that walked 15 miles one way to work everyday and supported his wife and two children only to have to walk back home 15 miles in the evening.  If he could do it, surely my son can too.  He has to want to, that’s all it is to it and he’s not going to want to as long as we keep giving and giving.  If we don’t quit giving, he’ll break us and never think a thing of it.

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When is helping not really helping?

I keep telling myself I’m helping my son.  I’m doing what I have to in order to help him get his life back on the road it needs to be on.  But when is helping not really helping?  What am I really helping him to do?  Am I helping him to get it together or am I helping him to keep running from what truly needs to be fixed?  By that I mean he has a lot to face and fix still.  Am I helping him to get to the road that helps him face and fix the mess he has created all on his own or am I helping him to run from it all and not really face it?  I wish I had the answer.  I wish someone had the answer but when they do, I don’t really want to hear it.

I have been told that I am only enabling him and not helping him.  That’s a hard pill for a parent to swallow, enabling instead helping.  I have prayed and prayed and still I can’t find the answer or don’t really want to hear the answer I get I’m afraid.  I don’t know which it is.  This is my firstborn son.  My blood, my child in my eyes even though in all reality, he’s a grown man that has to learn to live his own life and be responsible for his own choices.  What gets me is this was the most independent child we had.  I think his first words were ‘I do it’.  And do it he has, his way always.  That can be good but in his case, it’s hasn’t always been.

Still I have this darn decision to make about the truck.  Part of me wishes that someone else would make it for me and then I could say to my son that I had no choice but that’s the cowards way out.  Women think they are the only ones that suffer for their children but they’re wrong.  Father suffer and worry too, we just don’t allow it to show like women do.  There’s a part of me that wishes I could show it too but I’m a man and that’s not the way a man does things.

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Nick Nolte

Nick Nolte has long been one of my favorite actors.  He has played in some of my favorite movies like 48 hours with Eddie Murphy.  Sure he’s had has hard times but who hasn’t you know.  I mean we all go through some tough times and not necessarily with drugs and alcohol like Nick has.  But one thing stays constant and that’s his ability to act.

He was even named the “Sexiest man alive” by People Magazine in 1992.  Not too bad huh?  It was a great picture of him on the cover too.  But then you see a mug shot of him looking anything but sexy and I can’t help but wonder why we want to desperately to shoot someone down, especially celebrities.  They are people just like you and I.  They put their pants on one leg at a time just like you and I.  Sure they may pay more for their pants than we do but they earned that money with their acting ability just like we earn our money with what ever ability we have.

They entertain us, take us out of our lousy little existence sometimes and even through their art, give us inspiration to do better ourselves and still the media and us that are stupid enough to pay our hard earned money to buy the magazines and gossip papers that do all they can to bring them down.  We’re contributing to it.  Here’s a good example with Nick Nolte at the center.

“Nick Nolte, 67: Yeah, we were just as dumbfounded as you to realize that People declared Nick Nolte the Sexiest Man Alive in 1992, a year in which competition was apparently slimmer than Victoria Beckham in airtight Spanx. The actor, then 51 and coming off the success of “The Prince of Tides… more,” was called “sexy … very sexy!” by a dewy Christina Applegate, while the magazine enthused that he was a “big-lug Adonis with the heart of gold — sometimes known as the Bad Boy Reformed.” Except his bad boy days weren’t quite over. A decade after his Sexiest honor, Nolte was busted for DUI, which resulted in an epically unflattering, Hawaiian-shirt-and-electrified-hair mug shot that set the standard by which all celebrity police snaps are measured. He pleaded no contest and has continued to work steadily. And despite the occasional airport crash session and a tendency to dress like his homeless character from “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” he’s still some one’s sexiest: Last year, at the age of 66, he welcomed a daughter with girlfriend Clytie Lane.”

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PETA

I’m sure most of you know who PETA is and what it stands for.  But just in case you don’t, it stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.  I think that’s right.  It might be worded a little different but you get the idea.  This group does a lot of good but just like any other group, they get out on a limb on some things.  Did you know that they can come to your house and if by chance your dog has turned his water over and they see that the dog doesn’t have any water, you can be charged with animal cruelty even if you make sure the dog has water every day when you get home.  I don’t think that right.

Throwing flour on women wearing fur is crazy.  The animals that were used to make these fur coats were farm raised, not trapped like they used to be.  They were well fed and then, yes killed for their fur.  These animals are not then simply thrown out to rot, they are used for dog food and stuff like that.  These animals are treated better while they are alive than they would have been in the wild.  God gave us creatures for food, warmth and as companions too.

Yes it is wrong to club seal cubs for their fur.  I’m glad they are against that and anything that can lead to the extinction of a creature that God has given us.  Gluttony is a sin and can lead to the extinction of a whole species and with that in mind, they are doing a great thing.

But they don’t want deer hunted either.  Do you know what happens when there are too many deer in an area?  The deer don’t have enough food and then suffer, get sick and die a slow and painful death.  I’m sure there are some that suffer a slow and painful death when shot by hunters but as long as these hunters eat the animal, they are actually helping the deer that in the woods by thinning them out.  That’s far more humane than letting them overpopulate and die of disease and malnutrition isn’t it?  I think so.  All of this is just my opinion and if you see it differently, feel free to comment all you want and I’ll be glad to answer.

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HOPE for the New Year

HOPE is a four letter word but not one people use enough.  HOPE is the one thing we all have when we have nothing else.  HOPE gives us all a reason to keep trying.  HOPE give us all a reason to keep reaching for more.  HOPE is something you will have when you have nothing else left and yet HOPE is one four letter word that people don’t seem to believe in anymore.

I have so much HOPE for the new year.  I have so much HOPE for the world and my little part of it.  All I can do is try to make my little part of this big old world a better place and with that HOPE, just maybe it will spread.  When the white man first came to this country, Indians were looked upon as savages.  We all were peace loving people and willing to fight to keep what was ours.  That’s nothing more than the white people are guilty of too but we learned to live together and the world is a far better place for it.

My HOPE for the new year is that the world, or at least America, will still keep learning that we are all God’s creatures and all want the same basic things.  Those things are respect, honor, and to be able to take care of our families.  These are simple things in all reality and should not be so hard to obtain.  Through the great wisdom of God and our own people (meaning Americans) we can again find peace and prosperity.  This is my HOPE for the new year for not only Americans, but for the world.

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One of our traditions at Christmas

One of our favorite traditions at Christmas has always been to adopt a Native American family for the holidays.  The tribal counsel has requests for assistance through the holidays from young and old Native Americans in our area.  They don’t even have to be from the same tribe as we are and they can still be placed on our list.

This year there was a young couple that had just moved to this area.  They are of the Apache tribe.  They have two children ages 3 and 5 which are both boys and are only asking assistance with food.  That’s typical of Native American families.  We are a proud people and only ask for what is absolutely needed.  It’s hard to ask at all if the truth be known.

Well food is what they will get but the children will also have one of the best Christmas’s they have ever had too.  First of all, I want the family to feel welcome in our community.  I don’t want them to feel like outsiders like I know they already do.  We are all of one people now and must band together to help each other through these tough times.

My family went out on the 23rd and bought bicycles for the boys, clothes for them, and anything else my family wanted to buy for them.  With them being younger, it was fun to buy Legos, board games and hand held electronic games for them too.  We bought the family a DVD/VCR because we weren’t sure they had one and got several DVDs for the kids to watch.

As for the food, we purchased a $200 gift card at a local grocery store for them.  That should feed them for a few weeks.  Usually we do not get to meet the families we help but this one asked to meet us so the tribal counsel called today and wanted to know if it was okay with us to let them know who we are.  They came over last night and I am so glad that we met.  The kids were great and the family was so very thankful to us.  We now have new family members to celebrate life with.  That’s the miracle of Christmas for we are all Gods creatures.