Saturday, September 30

About Getting Along

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I think the reason why everyone can't get along is because they are arguing about the technicalities. They might all be pretty much going along in the same flow, but all they see is their own view of it. I am talking about what is called The Left. Instead of banding together and finding their similarities they separate while guarding their differences. It seems arguing is the method to convey ones information and that the important thing is that your own view wins out. Like a competition, verbal war. How much more progressive if we could use peaceful ways of telling each other our beliefs, if it is peace we are truly trying to achieve. All The Right needs is one popular leader and one set of plans and they are all lined up and following, no need for thoughts of their own. The left just drifts. Why do people have to pick out views and make them theirs and think they are the ultimate and defend them? If we are to believe in differences then why can't we accept differences in how we head to the same goal. Away from oppression and the Americanization of the world and towards freedom. We should learn to get along with those who share this direction and build our strengths, not divide ourselves. It seems peoples attitude is a cross between a bar room and a battlefield and the event is on. We must learn peace with each other first, if we hope to spread it. Save the arguing for the enemy, put up the fight there, hate what they stand for, while our forces gather and spread. There is a lot to be said about getting along as a method to straighten things out.

Tuesday, September 26

Shame on America

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Americans have lost their sense of shame. For some reason they remain proud of their country and think their system worth fighting for. You would think everyone of them would be ashamed to be part of such a nation and live from that feeling instead of thinking they deserve it all. They are all part of their wars, sacrificing their children to them. They run off of fear and greed and ignorance. They could have the truth but everything about their system tells them to ignore it and they do. They are even allowed to criticize their government so they can pretend they are not the bad parts of it and still feel good about themselves. War is so much a part of their lives they easily accept it as a necessity to maintain what they have. Living at the expense of other lives is truly evil. They think that they are not part of the rest of the world and separate beings that should have more and better. They have been brainwashed to be so sure of their superiority that all else looks like a bad imitation to them. Their very lifestyles are a rape of the world. Why when there is such damning evidence against them, can't they see they have become the worlds worst enemy. They are an enemy to their own selves and do not yet realize it. The so called war on terrorism has made them a target for revenge. They tell the world, we are sorry about our president, next time we will vote for another, so it will all be ok again. Not knowing that from the first white man to step foot on this soil, that wrong has been done and continues, a nation built on these wrongs, climaxing out to be the threat of the world. America needs to be stopped, totally dismantled, turned into something harmless and let the world go on its way and see if peace can develop without the head warmongers looming over it all.

Sunday, September 24

A Sunday Song

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Thursday, September 21

Another Freedom

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Back to the subject of building my house. I have been thinking of how wonderful it is to build whatever one wants, no limitations. It´s that kind of neighborhood here, no rules, just as long as you stay within your boundaries. One can build a tarpaper shack or one can build a mansion. It is your own business and no one judges. Here on the streets of my village all kinds of houses in all stages can be found. Rich and poor, one after the other. One stays in their neighborhood as they progress and just builds more. The tarpaper turns to block or wood, the block gets plastered, the wood painted, sometimes in months, sometimes over many many years. Its stages of growth. One of the best parts, the most wonderful, is that it is all paid for as you go. No payments, all yours. Just let your imagination go with what you can get and build whatever you can.

I have outgrown the first house my husband built here. It was always just a temporary one, even if it did last ten years now. Now the next is growing up, and again I think of how fortunate the freedom to build what you can and want is not taken away like it is in America. Americans have to build their houses like they are worried who is going to live in it next. Everything is rules and regulation and threatened fines and shut downs. One must build for the neighborhood. The loss of being able to start small and keep adding is a great one. Having to build it all complete to some idea of perfection make affording it a horrible obligation. Here, one can just live in one room, then add the next, building with what comes up. If you are poor you can receive land here, or for very little buy a piece and then start. The poor always have this chance. To be able to have a home is what is wanted and anyone should have that right to a little land and a little shelter. A country like America leaves to room for the poor, only those who want to make it on a larger scale. But one cannot get rid of the poor by outlawing what they need to do to cope.

I have no idea how long it will take to build my new house, all according to how money and time come in. Since it will be red bricks it will be easy to build slow and in stages, waiting for the right windows to come along. My imagination roams all over when I think of sun shining thru glass, so many possibilities.

Friday, September 15

The Paper Game

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About a month ago a new person moved into the neighborhood. The old man, Don Jose who is one of the original people in this area, he has rentals now that he is older, well past retirement, but still likes to work. So this new young man rented one from him. It was to be $800 pesos a month, but when he saw the visiting mothers car, which was almost new, he made the rent $1000 pesos. Don Jose always charges according to the ability to pay. Which is wise. Being very many young men in this neighborhood he was near unnoticed by my husband or I until just yesterday. As he, Tommy, walked by the fence that runs along the street on my property, he paused to ask for work. There are workers here, so there was no work, but a conversation started. It switched to Egnlish very soon, which is unusual for here, not to many speak it where I live. I was quick to notice his English was better than his Spanish and asked why. And then he started on his story, his past. Born in Mexico and brought to Long Beach California at three months of age. That was the last time he was in Mexico, unil now. His mother is a waitress and had several more children on the north side of the border and a new husband. He was brought up American style, enough money, enough luxuries, enough plenty. The first summer after his high school graduation he made a mistake, like youths can often make. At the wrong place, wrong time. On the way to go play ball, three friends decided to break into a house they saw the neighbor leave. He had no nerve for it and debated out front waiting, but to late. A squad car pulled up, the boys inside ran out back with what they stole and escaped. He being out front, like a target was easily picked up and taken away. Being a true Mexican, he would not tell on his friends, so instead of being given a light sentence he received two years in the state penitentiary at Lompoc. This is something his mother would remind him of on her visits. That she was the one who came, put money on the books, and would be there for him when he got out, not his long gone friends. He wasn’t ready for prison, he had been a good boy, not to experimental, stayed away from drugs, just a little marijuana, quite sensible. The stay there hardened him, one could tell. At the end of his jail stay, upon release he was suddenly taken to Mexicali, Mexico and dropped there late at night from a bus. He was told just before leaving his papers were not straight and his Mexican birth made him not a citizen. They told him next time he was caught across the border it would be five years in jail, for any reason, even just living and working. So he got a job picking asparagus and learned what hard work was. He has kicked around a lot since then. Just recently on Saturday night on the way walking home from a job, he had bought marijuna and some groceries. The police here stopped him, took both and all his money and told him to run. He said he never ran faster, he did not want to experience Mexican jail and the cops were smart enough to know he did not need to either. He has been here three years now and is almost twenty two years old. He has improved his spanish and definitely learned quite a lot of the ways of the land, necessity taught that. He misses his family and his college plans, but his safety here is more to him and his family then his being with them up there in such a dangerous for the innocent country.

Friday, September 8

Choosing Ignorance

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Remaining ignorant when truth is available is a choice that many make. Pick and choose what fits into your belief system. Americans and many others are comfort seekers and do not like disturbances. Part of being American is wanting to be looked up to. Americans need to show off who they are. They think they are superior and it is their job to enlighten the world with what they are. Here in Mexico Americans are looked at as being naive and blundering, without bad intent, for the most part. Americans are so sure of their selves they do not see that there are other ways that are not theirs, not just people being wrong. Americans do not see they are being laughed at and being tolerated.
Americans see themselves as helpers of the world and take this to heart like it is true, that it is necessary for their make up. When you point out to an American all the evil their country does, they say, yes but what about all the help we give. They hang onto this image like it is their own and when anyone tries to show them other views, they become immediately defensive. It is very sad, but Americas better side only serves as a smokescreen for the much worse that gets excused or hidden. These people hold on to what they themselves are and want their country to be that way too. There comes a time when what a country , or a person, does gets looked at as a whole, not its various parts. America is an evil country, it abuses the world and itself. American people respond to power, not truth, and whoever has the most power sways them. They can exist with the truth available to them, but never really let it enter their reality. They keep it outside themselves. They are aware that their country has done some very wrong things, but they grab hold of what they see as what it did right and use that for an excuse. Ever shifting their view to the more acceptable. Remaining ignorant, that’s how the American is able to be proud of his country and think it will succeed.