Friday ain't that black afterall.

All that rioting in Ferguson kept me awake the night of verdict. With two hours, I'm exaggerating, three hours of sleep, I did my Wednesday grocery shopping trip with my mother. The two grocery stores we visit were prepared with extra workers for a hard day before Thanksgiving.

The riots are such a waste. Think of the cost and how the money could have been spent better. It is one thing to protest but destruction is another thing.

It's Thanksgiving and most of the cloud of worry has dissipated with the reality of daylight. What is it about night to create ideas that seem so real that will not live through the next day..

1. I've got to get in gear and clean the worst of this filthy house before dinner. I am grateful for a house.

2. My mother is driving me nuts with her complaining and demands. She is determined to cook the meal and yet wants me to lift this, get this, fuss at my brother and tell him he is lazy. I am grateful my mother is still here and has the wits to cook.

3. My pets shed hair and sleep on my clean folded clothes which I will wash again to get the hair off. I am grateful for my pets love and friendship.

4. My sister brings a loaf of bread to make a dressing sandwich. She hasn't even eaten her meal. I've made rolls. Why can't the food we make be enough. I am grateful my sister cares enough to come and break bread with us.

As I finish getting the table set for dinner, my handicapped sister who lives with me stops to thank me for what I do for the family.

Thanksgiving evening, I surf the internet looking for something interesting to read. I sneer at the ones wanting to explain Ferguson. Some of them are just hate filled diatribes. It's funny how what we see reflects what we want to see. I have a friend who pontificates Martin Luther King quotes.

In time we will all get it. The tragedy is Michael Brown was not a monster and was so young with a future. Whether Darren Wilson callously murdered him will be debated. I think Darren Wilson did what he had to do. We might all be surprised how we would react in the same situation.

Is race relations a problem in Ferguson. Yes. Will it be answered easily? Probably not.

On NPR Wednesday, blacks and whites interaction and the affluence of the Atlanta area would probably produce a peaceful protest. In Macon, the sheriff came personally to make sure the protestors were OK.

One obstacle of race relations in this country is that it is assumed it is a Southern problem.

Another obstacle is not outward racism. It is internal prejudice that we may not be aware exists.

I thought the following article was the best of the matter.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/opinion/charles-blow-fury-after-ferguson.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=Blogs

I have white guilt. We had parallel societies develop in this country due to the exclusion of African-Americans. Then whites complain that African Americans think different.

I would say we owe reparations but that would be a mess with DNA analysis. It is ironic that most Southern whites assume they have black ancestry. I know I probably do.

Plus Southern whites and blacks are not that far in their fundamental views of life. Politics is another matter which is exploited and gerrymandered by corporations and politicians in an attempt to control. I say attempt to control because I believe in the law of unintended consequences.

I read the following article in the British newspaper, The Guardian.

http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/fashion-blog/2014/nov/24/ten-things-we-learned-from-posh-people-inside-tattler

Thank God my ancestors got on the boat and left England.

To recognize there is a problem is significant. Protest and grieve for Michael Brown. There will be more of all races with the common factor of being a member of a group of people with little political power.

5. I give thanks for living in a society that recognizes we need to be ever vigilant of our right to free speech and the importance of the common man.

As President Garfield said, "God loves the common man, he made so many of them."

Beware yellow toenails

Yep, beware yellow toenails.

Aren't thick yellow toenails something that happens to old folks?

I know I had a yellow toenail. I used an antifungal liquid that I applied with a brush around the edges of my toenail. The toenail grew normal and the gross part fell off. Since then, fungi seems to be under control.

Now what does this have to do with the title. I read an article on how your foot can give your personality. Crooked fingers mean one thing and long fingers mean another. But the warning I liked best was yellow toenails of a smoker can mean lung cancer. I would post the website but simply repeating that last part gags me.

Since my fingers aren't part of the gag reflex. I share the baloney with you.

My favorite webview this week was a site that determined your IQ with 15 questions. My IQ was 193 which was pretty remarkable in that the IQ tests of my schooldays were considerably lower than this genius reading. Truthfully, I had downright average scores.

In other words, you can't believe much of what you read on the web.

I hope you laughed at that, in agreement of course.

Last night when I heard the verdict in Ferguson, I did say a prayer for all involved.  I just don't have sympathy for the protestors. What is tearing the city down good for. Organizing for better representation and helping one another is progress.

I taught school which is a close cousin to law enforcement. I remember a pretty girl frantically crying that a student of mine who I will call Lucia was going to beat her up when she walked home.

I got up and did what I needed to do. My work day had ended an hour before. I called Lucia's grandmother. She assured me her grandchild was in the house. I sent the other girl home. I called her house to make sure she got home safely.

Next day, that girl came in and told me that there was no problem with Lucia. I had created a problem. I told her I did not know her before yesterday. Don't come by my room afterschool no more.

Lucia came in that morning and looked at me balefully. Lucia and her grandmother didn't complain at all.

Would I have done it again? Yes, I would not allow children to fight when it can be prevented.

 I don't know what the purpose of the girl changing the story. I know Lucia got in trouble every once in awhile for fighting. However, she was not in trouble because of what the girl said. I had sent the situation to the guidance counselor. Plus Lucia was my student.  I had a bias in Lucia's favor.

Lucia told me she made the threats.

I often wonder if it worked in kids favor to encourage them to be truthful. The world is so damn crooked. All those conflicting and changing witnesses to the shooting make you question their motive.

It is a shame that so many are giving opinions and not respecting the rule of law. The law gets it wrong. The law gets it right.

I do have sympathy for the police officer. The disrespect I experienced from some students was outrageous. I had a principal to ask me what I did for a student to call me a bitch one time.

Ferguson has serious problems. They have a concentration of people who have a low income, are not represented in government and not on the police force. The anger that spills out has more to do with frustration than race. 

I don't think those who choose to throw bricks to break windows and set police cruisers on fire are doing anything to convince anyone that the police are the problem.  Ferguson will not have a problem in a year. Folks will need to move out of the burned out area to have a job, a store to shop or a safe home to lay their head.

On a gut level, people have felt terrible discrimination and that anger wells to the surface. People with good emotional intelligence can put their mind in the right place. Many just don't know how. .  I am white and I see this in the white community. Crazy justifications for indifference are rationalized. People who are deeply caring that can turn around and spout incredibly negative ideas.

The only person I understand is Michael Brown's mother. No one accepts a child's loss. 

But for everyone else, "The truth shall set you free." Of course, Diogenes still paces the world in search of an honest man or woman. To have feet of clay ...

We have a lot to be thankful for.

Great Feel Good Article

There is a lot of good in the world. It can get lost in the moment, misery or tragedy. But it is there.

I am an American and have been buffered from the worse. I have faced my foes and obstacles but I have never been loaded up on a train to an extermination camp in Nazi controlled Germany or Poland. I've never been a religious minority chased up a mountain without food, water, or warm clothes to escape execution by ISIS. 

Cynicism and mistrust is a creature that I wear like a gold necklace around my neck. I may not see it and forget but it is there.

My sister has schizophrenia which is a terrible disease. When you live with someone who suffers, you see the disease aspect. My sister is currently avoiding me because she has done something at one time bothered me.

It no longer bothers me. It is not her fault it is the fault of people who are willing to meddle in her life but will leave and not even see the pieces that need to be picked up.

I dropped my sister off ten minutes early for her psychiatrist appointment. I gassed the car up and got us a breakfast sandwich because it is always a long wait. I get back to the community center where she talks remotely to her psychiatrist by computer screen. It is 10:04 when I get out of the truck.

They have her back there. I ask to join. The girl tells me I can't. I say I am her legal guardian. She says that my sister does not want me back there.

You may think why can't they speak alone with her. I have learned when people are going to take advantage of her or my mentally disabled brother, they talk to them alone. Get them agree to things and then that person can deny anything that can cause them a problem.

No I don't trust a doctor. Their feet are clay like mine.

Anyway, my main fear was they would arbitrarily change her medication.  Like many schizophrenics, my sister does not think she needs the medicine. The voices my sister hear can be horrendous. I have lived with her off her medication.

I get back there and he is finished. I am panicked about her medicine. The doctor gives me some "s---" about what her insurance covers and the medicine is not changed. He thinks I'm a idiot. I recognize he is going to talk about something related but not what I have said. So I shut up, her medicine is not changed.

Him thinking I'm an idiot can be used to my advantage. Unfortunately the mental healthcare system is not your friend. It is an adversary.

I will go to a lawyer to help me navigate my sister's healthcare. I would like to write a letter but it is a battle.  What an insurance company dictates is not what my sister's healthcare will be.

Later I found out what my sister was urgent to discuss without me present was my misappropriation of her money. When she told me her psychiatrist had told her many people with schizophrenia die from people misappropriating their money, I learned what the privacy was about.

She feels the $550 a month she gets from social security should be managed by her. I give her $250 for spending money. The other $300 I use in the monthly grocery and dining out fund that my mother manages. I put $300 of my own money in that fund. Any medical or dental bills I cover.

I walk away from any fight but if you want to know what a living hell is. Live with an untreated schizophrenic.

To say the system is broken is not correct. There is no system. So few doctors train for psychiatry and mental health services are so poorly funded, you are truly on a wing and a prayer.

Anyway, my family is doing well. We have what we need and many things we want. I hope you are so blessed.

If you got it, Flaunt it and make money too!

Hit the following link and

Help Kim Kardashian get even richer and look at her big booty.

The argument has nothing to do with women, body image, men. It has to do with capitalizing on your assets presented in a fashion that has nothing to do with reality.

As woman of a certain age knows, you don't has a waist like that with a butt like that. Even if you do, your legs are big. They can be toned but you are planted squarely and pound the ground when you walk.

Some say it is a racial thing. Yeah right, I've seen as many white women as black women with big bums. What is racial is that African Americans are more tolerate of women having a few (or lets be honest, a lot) of extra pounds.

Which makes you think, Why are so many white folks fat?

Anyway, Kim needs a new $40,000 Gucci purse and Oprah is not going to share a few million to help her out. It might be Christmas for the Koch brothers with the Keystone pipeline being approved; but, Kim has got to do it on her own.

I agree the photo has been photoshopped but I am impressed. It is unusual for a woman to have a big butt and big boobs.

The only real criticism I have about the photo is that well -
       When did a photo become a story?
Afterall we all know Kim is the queen of Glam.

Next on my opinator compass is Kiera Knightly's untouched photo.

Link to Kiera Knightley's photo

All I can say, you can never be too thin. This is why American women like Kim better. She's got a little too much weight on her which is something most women have a problem with the older they get.

But then you have those Kiera Knightleys of this world. I am so jealous. I just want to point out it is not hard to have firm breast when they aren't that big.

And why should I be jealous?

I have always known men like a big butt. Why should I play favorites?

I'm not. I'm just another bystander.

The human body and face can be a great work of art in it's complexity of age or youth.

Neither of these photos are art. They are both commercial photos. One is to promote an unknown magazine with the shock of Kim's artificially large buttocks. I least I hope artificially, she will have some back problems one day and think of the cellulite. The other promotes the movie that may be mentioned when someone discusses Kiera Knightly.

I might be getting older, overweight, have a few lines and not magazine material. But,I look good in my clothes. I feel good too!

Look both ways

No talking, I can't talk to you. This road is crazy every morning. People just pull out in front of you.

The radio station usually plays NPR unless it gets too intense about something in the world that is baffling and insolvable. Then I try the pop music station. Not a great choice, they play the same songs everyday and every hour. “Girls just want to have fun” by Cyndi Lauper and “Beat It” by Michael Jackson lose their luster. The play list is lost in the 1980s.

Last choice is the country music station. Not that I don't like country music. It's just sounds the same. Songs about drinking cold beer mixed with the right wing ideology spouted continuously by a radio host. Its not the opinion that bothers me, it is the lack of rebuttal. It spouting off about serious topics using spin versus what is at stake. It's taking my culture and telling the next generation who we are.

You learn a lot listening to radio. For example, Richard Nixon was the most liberal president of the twentieth century on NPR. I agree. It really hits me on Facebook when I see former hippies being the most adamant conservatives. One woman who is lucky to be alive wants welfare recipients drug tested. She has lived on disability most of her life and --- has had drug abuse problems.

Of course a lot of decent religious people I grew up with have similar opinions. They weren't hippies, they didn't smoke pot. Why I didn't acquire these same opinions? I don't know.

Anyway, I am a creature of habit. NPR moves to classical music after 9 am and frankly it doesn't have a lot of beat. I know, I know. Anyway, I stopped at a red light and the pop music station had just played a rousing repeat of “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson. John Tesh was opining on his “Eat Your Vegetables and Walk Carefully On The Thin White Line of Life” rhetoric.

I looked up and the light was green. Dang, I need to not let my mind wander I thought. I released the brake and as my habit was I looked to the left to make sure the traffic had stopped. I stepped on the brake quickly. Barreling down the road with no sign of stopping was a log truck.

Traffic rarely comes from over the hill on the other side. Today, a sporty Trans Am came through the light and hit the log truck.

I took a right and thought I had no cell phone. Stopping to give any help I could, a sheriff car was already there. He must have been behind me. A pudgy 19 year old got out of the car unscathed. No damage to the log truck. I wasn't needed. The sheriff saw everything.

When I left, the log truck driver looked like a decent man. We were all lucky. However, I did feel for the truck driver. I've screwed up before. All in all, he dodged a bullet as well as I. The kid had angels cushioning him.

Get out and vote.

Things that exist sometimes slap you in the face before you see them. These scorched earth ads close to the election is to rally the faithful. If they can get enough of their diehards to the polls, they don't need the independent voter. Scorching hot anger or frustration to get folks to the polls.

I am a conservative, independent voter. I just don't believe that having the wealth and power concentrated to a few people is good for regular folks.  I'm also female. Entitlement programs that help women and children are good to me.

Well, I heard that the independent voter is fiction. Each of them have a party preference. They called my bluff. I tend to vote for the Democrat. I vote for the Republican when I feel they have better character or there is no other choice.

Frankly when I was young, I had no preference. 

I'm not a legacy Democrat. I just vote that way now.

Each party lacks leadership. The Democrats at one time seemed a fringe party. As a result the Republican party is now become complacent and increasingly a fringe party. Whatever happened to having opposing views within a party.

It's like we are voting between those who don't believe climate change is true, anti-gay marriage, no common core, anti-abortion, pro gun rights, tax breaks for the rich, pro death penalty versus the opposite. This is what I mean by fringe. Only a minority and Sarah Palin fit in those categories. 

More than half of us are for and against the same principal at times. Plus they aren't the only issues in government. Our political parties have proverbially painted themselves in a corner in which reason and logic seem inescapable. 

Pragmatism is the better part of a politician's logic. They will spout an opinion and privately live another. Getting elected is part of the game.

So vote your conscious. We are all dependent on a combination of luck and fate. 

If you look at the politics among the colonies during the American Revolution. The same scorched Earth scare tactics were prevalent. I guess the more things change. The more they stay the same. Those last two sentences are from a Jewish proverb.

Anyway, I pray the best person wins on election day.