There is still time

 One of the phrases which comes to mind when trying to age gracefully is "bucket list". Most researchers feel that the term came from "kick the bucket" and is used to list things you want to do before you die. Apparently, people feel if they complete the things in their bucket before they die, their lives will be complete.

My bucket list doesn't contain a lot of things. Over the course of my life so far I have been extremely lucky in doing things and going places that many people might include on the list. This was a benefit of growing up in the military and an extreme interest in things beyond my normal every day.

I was reminded of one of these while watching an old movie on a new app. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was released in  1969. I was 12 years old and thanks to my father, who never missed a western, we saw this at a drive-in movie in Augusta, GA. I think I fell in love with Robert Redford and Paul Newman at the same time. 

I also fell in love with the trains. I have always been fascinated with trains. Perhaps this is DNA from my Great Grandfather Council, who began his career as a callboy on trains that ran in South Carolina. He ended his career in Florida as the District Superintendent of the Atlantic Coastline Railroad but that is a whole different story. 

So, back to bucket lists. One year I decided I had to see the Grand Canyon. So I began planning and decided to make a spring trip before the summer tourists took over. I also chose to stay at the North Rim. Fewer tourists and the same beautiful vistas, perhaps even prettier, could be found. I took one of my nephews and set out to check some things from my list. 

Along with the Grand Canyon, I had always wanted to see the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde so I planned the trip around those places. Mesa Verde was spectacular. Staying in the lodge allowed us to visit the park, join in a wonderful Native American Craft show and view a herd a wild mustangs (my favorite) at dusk one evening. 

The drive from there to the North Rim was several hours but traffic was so scarce, it was eerie. The Grand Canyon was indescribable and the riding of the mules down in to the canyon fulfilled another item on the list. 

Preparing to fly back home landed us back in Durango at a hotel for a day before we could catch our flight and perusing the tourist brochures in the hotel, I saw  train. As I was reading the brochure, I found we could take the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad up to a small, silver mining town. I was sold. 

This train was used in the movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, plus The Sons of Katie Elder, National Lampoon's Vacation, City Slickers, and many others. I also got to visit a silver mine, purchase a new pair of moccasins, some raw silver and see some things that weren't on my bucket list but should have been. 

Go and do stuff. Travel somewhere, even if it is right outside your normal driving area. You will find that those memories of even the smallest things, create happiness in your life.

I still love Robert Redford, Paul Newman, and trains. 

Telling them all to go to hell

 I am normally, well, most of the time, a calm, easy going person. I try to live my life simply. I don't ask a lot of the people I know, much less, the ones I don't.

This makes me wonder why we are so easily swayed to become yes men or women to companies that we pay to provide some service or another. 

I get a discount with Verizon because I am a teacher. I received a letter yesterday telling me I needed to update my account so I could continue to received my discount. I tried to call Verizon and was put on so many computerized accounts who could call me by name but could not help me. They kept sending me texts and all I wanted was to speak to a human, a real one, not a computer generated one. At one point I was yelling in the phone to speak to a human. Of course, that got me nowhere. 

I was finally sent to a live, data person who could only respond by message, he/she could not call and speak to me but I could clink on another link and set up an appointment for them to call me at my convenience. Huh? My convenience is NOW. I will sit on hold for a couple of minutes to speak to a live person. I don't mind. It is much easier to tell someone the issue than to have to try and type it out on a phone pad with little letters when you are older and don't see as well as you used to. 

I finally threatened to call their competitor and change to them before they put me in contact with a real person. This frustration had gone on for almost 30 minutes. My threat to change carriers finally did the trick. After letting their customer service person know how angry I was with them and why, I received my discount and assurances there would be an option to stay on hold to speak to a real person. We will see.

The same thing happened with my house insurance. Many people believe they will lose their insurance if they have certain breeds of dogs. So do like I did. Tell them to cancel it. You can get insurance. I promise. Whoever owns your loan will make sure. You may have to pay a little more but it can be found. I refused to fill out this stupid form from my insurance wanting to know what kind of dog/dogs I had. Now they don't insure against dog bites. So why in the heck do they need to know that? I refused and they never sent me anything like that again. I still have the same insurance. They still cover the same thing.

I think we have somehow grown in to a group of people who are scared of so many things. I don't quite understand why people won't stand up for themselves. I am not talking about suing people but just every day no. I won't do that, answer that, etc. 

As long as my money is supporting your business, I can say no. I still have that right.  

Random thoughts

 At 5:30 each morning when I leave for work, I drive like a normal person. My son says I have always driven like a granny, but I disagree. I just received my new driver's license which doesn't expire until 2029 and Safe Driver is on the front. I had one ticket, once, when I was delivering tearsheets for the Winter Haven News Chief, but that was my only ticket. I was 22. I was also sideswiped in Arcadia once. The other driver didn't see my truck. My big, white, F150 was not noticed by her. She was charged, not me. Driving to work this week, I noticed so many who sped past me down Tuttle Avenue going 50 or 60 miles an hour after riding my butt because I am doing the speed limit. I always meet up with them at the red light. I also had to drive past a fatality on that same road in the afternoon. There are two school zones with blinking lights. People just cruise on by, paying no attention. I always arrive alive. Unfortunately, many don't.

Context is so important when examining information. Perception is the key when viewing information. How far we have fallen in the examination of evidence. 

Today's teenagers don't have a grip on history before yesterday. I have decided the worst thing that happened to them were cell phones. I have come to believe children should not have one before they graduate from high school. Perhaps put a book in their hands and teach them how many places they can go and what great things they can learn by reading. Of course, watching so many adults do the same as the kids, eyes glued to a phone while driving, eating, etc. shows me where the kids get it from. 

I love Florida and considering my lineage, the 8 generations of my family who lived here before, did as well. I don't like fronts, which come through every 4 or 5 days during the winter, drop the temperatures dramatically, and leave me with a sinus headache. 

I guess people who believe they are entitled to do or say anything they want, any time they want because of their "rights" include the high school teacher, in her 30s, who was sleeping with one of her students. He was 15. I am not even shocked any longer at the lows people will sink to because of what they believe they are entitled to. Lock her up!

I have subscriptions to several apps through my Prime Video and still cannot find anything new to watch that is worth it. My attention span is longer than a minute. Can someone develop some television worth watching?

I am still thrilled when one of my students send me a note saying she appreciates me or drops off Valentine's Day gifts. Chocolate and stuffed pink bunnies make my day. 

Watching the chaos

 As I was watching the ending of the House's case for impeachment, I was reminded of what our elected officials decided a few years ago.

Let me give you some background: I worked in print media for 35 years. I am now a history teacher at a high school in Florida. I am a product of the same public high school system, having graduated from Lakeland High School in 1975. I went to state colleges, Manatee Community College and the University of South Florida. I received my degree in Political Science and have, since I received it, always invited my friends and acquaintances over to the house for an adult beverage and conversation if there were political topics we did not agree upon. NO one has ever taken me up on my offer.

Because of Florida's legislature deciding that our children were not being educated properly in the ways of the government, we needed to require even more government classes. Now, school children in Florida take Civics in middle school. They must then pass an EOC (end of course exam) to go on to high school. So now they must also have American Government their senior year. Why? From what I have seen in our Senators and Representatives alike in the past few years, they don't understand our government or even the job they are supposed to be doing. They are getting rich, though. 

By using catchwords to snag people's emotions, they sway the public to their way of thinking, regardless of the precedent they may be setting. Try to get someone on the phone or the answer to an email. They hide behind the narrow confines of re-election and ignore anyone who cannot contribute huge sums of money to their campaigns.

But by god, those high school seniors need American Government or our country is going to go to hell in a hand basket. 

Perhaps we need to place the shoe on the other foot and require ALL our representatives from the lowest level up to go back to school and learn what their responsibilities are as government officials. From what I have seen lately, they all need it. 

No NFL in this house (Updated)

 

Frodo, the last surviving dog from the atrocious dog fighting ring died on December 18th. Jonny Justice, another surviving dog died 2 days before that. You can read the story here on these dogs.  I wrote this last February, right before the Super Bowl. My feeling have not changed. I still think Michael Vick is pure scum. I don't mind saying so and I don't care who agrees with me. I will never not write about this. Never. This was my last column. There will be another and another so people don't forget.

I will not partake in the Super Bowl. No parties, no team, no viewing of the game. Today I find that disheartening but not surprising.

I love football. I have loved football since I have a memory of football. I loved it as a little girl; I loved it as a high schooler (go Dreadnaughts); and I loved it as an adult. 

Michael Vick, professional dog killer, ruined that for me. After the NFL chose to allow him to come back to a game, a profession that paid him an astronomical salary to throw a football, I chose to not support the NFL ever. 

There are many, and I know them, who say it doesn't matter. My support is a pin prick of the support the athletes of the NFL and the NFL itself receives. I don't care. The minute we allow ourselves to become so caught up in a game that we overlook the heinous crime of dogfighting, we have lost some of our humanity.

Michael Vick had the world. He threw it away by fighting dogs. He didn't deserve to come back. He is scum to me even though some people argue he paid his debt to society. He didn't. He bargained and finagled and got all the charges of actually dog fighting dropped. His charges were only running an interstate gambling operation.

Gambling? Yep. This had nothing to do with cards or numbers but it did have to do with the explicit purpose of breeding dogs to fight one another until their death. Should the dog he entered lose, the dogs were then lowered in to a swimming pool with batteries attached to their heads and electrocuted. They were slammed on concrete until their heads burst open. He did not deserve to come back to football. 

So, as many people are paying huge amounts of money to watch a game that celebrates people like Michael Vick, I will be here, with my two rescue dogs, watching a romantic comedy on Netflix.  We wonder about how our country got to the point it is. Perhaps we can start looking backward at what we have accepted and allowed as a society. 

Pandemics have impacts

 I will admit it. I have struggled with this pandemic. I live by myself, with two rescue dogs and the absence of human contact has been rough on me. I am a creature of social habit. I like being around people. Not big crowds, but little ones or even one on one. 

I hate death. I think we all do. That is one of the strongest worries with this pandemic. Death. Losing people you love simply because of a virus which impacts different people, different ways. I have seen people poo poo masks away because their best friend's second cousin's first wife's uncle got it. He had a little cold and was back to work in a few days. No need to mask up or social distance. It will be over in a few days and all will be back to normal. I have a right not to wear a mask. I have a right to attend huge parties with no thought of who might be impacted. I have a right. Do you?

The problem is that it does kill people. They die. Alone, without friends or family because they are in isolation. You had a right and what did you do with it? Who did you come in contact with? Who's grandmother? Who's child? Whose father? We seem to have become such a selfish nation of people. Was I that selfish when I was younger? Did I worry about others when old age was not creeping in so fast?

I lost my Uncle Charlie last Thursday to Covid-19. He was very special. He was the uncle we all grew up with that was fun. He was always up for a challenge from the kids. I remember counting his ribs when I was a little girl because he was so skinny. He was always the uncle who took us on the rides at the fair that our parents would never ride. He was always there, he and my Aunt Linda, if we ever needed anything. 

He was born in West Virginia, the son of a coal miner. He came from a very large family and moved to Florida when he was a teenager. He saw my Aunt Linda throw a coke on her then boyfriend, Paul, at the local drive in. He told his brother, "I am going to marry that little girl over there." So he did. On the night before he shipped out to Paris after joining the Army, my Aunt jokingly painted his toenails. Imagine what happened when he was sitting on the upper bunk of the troop ship with no shoes and socks on. He never lived that one down.

He gave us wonderful French chocolate the year we spent Christmas with them in Paris and gave us a tour of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. I was 6. The memories are plentiful and to list them all would take a while. 

On Tuesday he will be laid to rest and able to join my Aunt Linda. He missed her so after she was gone. I will miss him terribly. I hate this pandemic and I hate death. 

I am disgusted with the people who still disdain masks and social distancing. I hope you never lose a loved one because of someone else's selfishness. 

Welcome to my world

 Writing has always come easily to me. As I become more mature, I have talked to people who struggle to put their thoughts on paper and I thought how sad that was. 

This blog will not change your mind about anything. At least, I don't think it will. I am not writing to change peoples' minds. I am writing so I can release all these thoughts in my mind that I have no one to share with except my two rescue dogs, Tega and Elsa. 

In the past week I have had so much to say about so many things and no way to express myself. Social media is great for what it is, but it will never replace the inner thoughts of most people. It is a sound bite; a small blip on the screen; written and gone in a second. No deep thinking here. No soul searching or waiting to spout off because, you know, it is your right to say anything you like at exactly the minute you think it.

So welcome. Read if you like. I am not here to win friends or influence people. I used to worry about things like that but not so much any longer. If you respond to try and begin an argument or with hate words, you will be removed. I am not about hate. Disgust? Maybe, but not hate.