January Chronicles

About Taos Crow

2010-01-11T15:04:00.000-08:00

Thinking About Taos Crow;
and Other Matters ; Jan 10, 2009

Terry Turner, Copyright 2010

Terry and Gene Discuss Drilling for oil

Many of you know from my remarks or your own experiences that life is, at best uncertain and can be quickly consigned away.

I am, as many of my readers know, facing death daily due to small cell carcinoma in my lungs… it has been a heavy weight to deal with on a daily basis and it is always changing one’s priorities, goals, and objectives. For instance I was thinking of the fall of 2001. That fall Suzi and I had been out of town for some reason.

Upon our return, the barman from the White Horse Saloon, suddenly appeared with two dark beers and instructions to be prepared to go to dinner…this could only mean Brother Gene was on the scene, probably with a friend, and ready to kick around every subject on the planet ranging from politics to the Yellowstone cauldron and don’t duck,
Gene allowed no off topics of any sort.

My half brother had faced, trench by trench, the Nazis and brooked no sort of politically correct speech in his family or his oil field supply stuff…plain straight talk was what he demanded and expected throughout his adult life.

On this particular occasion we had no idea that Gene was literally at death’s door, laid low by a common bacteria (the helicobacter pylori – I’ll append some remark about it as a note at the conclusion of my reflections).

That glorious fall the ancient soaring trees of Taos gathered bright gold round trying to warm themselves with color against the chill night air. The old trees, many soaring over a hundred feet into the sky, are mostly cottonwoods and willows who drop a copious abundance of beautifully colored leaves whose golden coloration is so dramatic that they could have been individually selected by a Hollywood set designer. Suzi and I often drove down Kit Carson, the location of our Gallery; just to see the infinity of colors presented by Mother Nature… it was one of the first visions of Taos color that encouraged us to make the move from the flying-carpet colors that paint the valleys around of Ridgway to the magic-carpet colors of Taos.

In the near mountains, cold winds rush too and fro, while the ancient voices of old God begin rising steadily, as they prepare the blasts of wind, sleet, ice, and snow. The bright blue sky, draws back, back, and yet further back where, with each recession, the sky grows bluer yet. The sky draws back further from mother earth and nearer the fiery furnaces of father sun. Fall colors rise up from earth and pour down from sky. Warm, wonderful colors which speak of harvest, and the steaming festive board, but even these brilliant colors cannot stay the approaching cold.

The Taos crows huddle together and in the chill morning air have only one
word, "Cold. Cold,” they say and say again, “cold, cold, cold.” In the late afternoon sun, their speech recovers a bit, but none can doubt the sure arrival of early winter. If winter be as perfect as fall has been, the snows will be surely deep and we will all take deep comfort from our dry, well stacked wood.

Taos crow mostly meditate in the winter and we are denied the usual proceeds of their speeches until spring when they come out in force to announce the certain end of winter, the promise of new crops and new harvests to feed the land; and, of course, to celebrate the end of death along with the promise of new life which is always connected to spring..

When a fine person, an excellent spiritual being, passes over, the crows huddle and mutter in the chill, crisp morning air to prepare an announcement of the passing. That bulletin is always the same: They have one word, "Gone." Gone they say! And say again. Gone. “Gone, gone, an Angel gone. Where do such as she go? There are few enough folk hereabout; and fewer Angels.” The crow, in this case, are thinking of the passage of a significant crow, in this case, are thinking of the passage of a great hearted lady, known in some circles as the Red Hatted Angel --- so long great hearted Gael, and so long and Clink and Clank residents of Comfort and remembered of Taos.

Gael Montana was a unique life force and left her imprint on everything that she was near. She had a remarkable store of vibrant force that left you no doubt that you had encountered a truly powerful being; other people, as we know touch us lightly and like a shadow are gone like a soft breeze.

Today is beautiful; the clouds are lurking well below the horizon, off in the direction of Canada, and leave only a pure, deep blue sky as backdrop for the two hundred year old cottonwoods and the towering willows that are very yellow this time of year.

We were having snow skiffs just days ago as it is still, barely, winter here even though we are half through December. Only a few trees are beginning to leaf out but the hundred foot green spruce are a welcome spot of green against the brilliant blue.

Black, black, huge crows bark from the tree tops, arguing away. One rough old crow asserts "... it's tomorrow!"

A senior crow rebuffs "... it's yesterday!"

And so they quarrel all day.

Of course all crows know it is today, not yesterday, nor tomorrow. The crow’s muttering of tomorrow and of yesterday are mere reminders to be here now.

Their loud arguments are only meant to distract humans from the more serious crow discussions that are conducted further up the mountain around the Sacred Blue Lake.

Cheery robins and great black and white penguin-like magpies take no truck in such discussions because they are relentlessly stalking the perfect twig for their spring nests --- and their discerning mates will accept nothing less than the perfect twig.

Old crow, reminds me, “Governments, nations, and people of importance come and go. The Sacred Blue Lake is eternally tranquil and invisibly reflecting the blue sky invisibly reflecting the lake’s own blue waters.

Governments, nations, and people of importance come and go. The Sacred Blue Lake is forever.

Out the window I see a fresh crop of dandelions shaking their fistful of bright yellow swords at the Sky God, but already the first dandelion crop that had advanced to the attack, lived brightly, lived briefly, and then suddenly died. Victims not of winter, not of summer, but victims only of time.

Only A few yesterdays past they sprang forth with all the power of youth but, in ain a few small moments, they grew mature, suddenly aged, and stepped over the edge to again become the raw stuff of the universe. How important they seemed; how important the games seemed; but as they and we draw near to the edge of eternity, how unimportant it all seems.

Let’s take time to agree that we should all have more hot chocolates, give and take more hugs, have more well steeped teas, take longer and more pleasant breakfasts, read more good books, and spend more time in the afternoon sun ---- and pay less and less attention the fury of social clamor raining, storming out of our radios and televisions.. As old Kahlil Gibran said, "… the moving finger, having writ, moves on.... “and you will have missed writing that thank you note or that sentiment that should have been written weeks ago.
And face it, according to my experience; God does hate cold coffee, cold chocolate, and cold tea.

Personally, I shall listen more to the barking crows and less to the recurring and meaningless chatter, cajoling, and threats of presidents, kings, brokers, bankers’ congressmen, and terrorists. God and karma, in good time, will attend to the just needs of those folks... Those time stealing people are always with us; but the crow is only here today and has only a few words to spare for us ere they are away to speak with angels and other vapor’d creatures.

While walking the canons and trails of the area and speaking with old crow when he permitted, it seems only yesterday that the dry winds of depression and starvation calmed themselves, only yesterday the reverberation of the Nazi boot receded and with them the smell of burning Jewish flesh, only yesterday we rose from our caves and shelters as the threatened glowing atomic flash diminished, only yesterday the bright golden brass ring was within humanity's grasp, only yesterday unsuspected terror leapt from the skies; and only yesterday black hooded death sowing powdery decay stalked all human life, and only yesterday I felt a wispy thread of hate and fury lightly poison my cheerful heart ... only yesterday tomorrow seemed so much better than does tomorrow today.....but enough, how gloomy can one get... I think this is what is called muck racking ---- oh well, I have read too much Thomas Paine of late.

I love the brilliant whiteness of snow. Its unmarred purity suggests better times, better days, and better places. Snow reminds me an old piece, Hemingway’s A Clean Well Lighted Place. A clean place with pristine white tablecloths and bright lights. A place that can delay that which one might prefer not to encounter.

Decades and decades have rolled away since I read it. I can't quite bring it to the foreground of my memory, but white coffee cups on white tablecloths with some good plate or silver and real cream in a heavy creamer will invariably open the doors for a new line of thought. Such images and aromas give one a sense of new potentials for a new virgin day.

The whiteness, the ceremonial whiteness reminds one of a first baptismal, or perhaps the waiter's white shirt, white apron and black tie suggest the feeling of a confessional. But he, or she, who would take the confession, must have a whiter and wider cloth than most, for such as they often hear too much for their own good. So a great blanketing Taos snow is needed to soften, to clean away, to dissolve and wash away dark thoughts, dark words, and dark places.

The snow gathers light and hurls back all manner of darkness. Don’t they say there is no darkness, only the absence of light?

Reflecting on the death of my brother, Gene: He fought for our freedom. Gene survived the Nazis but was killed by Helicobacter Pylori Bacteria. H Pylori infects about one in every two mature adults in the United States and, as it is easily cured, there is NO reason for any to die of such a simple bacteria so easily controlled.

God Smites My Father

2010-01-09T15:25:00.000-08:00

God Smites My Father

by Terry Turner

Dear reader, I wish this was not a true story, but it is, at least almost, and there is nothing I can do about that, my family being big kidders and all. I am a now a grey beard, reflecting on my long and rather life and this story is seen through the bright and amazed eyes of a seven year old child.

It was, so to speak, the syrup in Dad's shoes that lead to the eventual disbanding of the Church of Fundamental Deviations and the subsequent opening up of the Second Street Mexico City Food Cafe. We lived on Second Street and every one in my family is a big kidder. Especially my Dad and his brothers like Uncle Kelley.

See, Dad decided he was gonna play a trick on Kelley cause the last time Kelley stayed all night with us, Kelley sneaked around during the night and poured Dad's new shoes full, plumb full, of Log Cabin syrup. The syrup wouldn't clean out neither and Dad got real ex-cited about it. So Dad had to play a joke on Kelley, you can see that. He didn't have no choice.

Not long after the syrup joke, Dad and me was driving out to take some mail to Kelley's, they lived in the country, and when we got there they was gone somewhere. Visiting or gone to town or something. Anyways it was a great opportunity for Dad to play a joke on Kelley.

Dad went and got into Kelley's house through a window and he let me in by the front door. Anyways he started going around and taking all the wicks out of their kerosene lamps so they wouldn't have lights if they got home after dark. But that didn't suit him, not nearly, 'cause they might come home in the daytime
instead. Next we stuffed a good white towel up the cook stove flue so the smoke couldn't draw and would just naturally smoke the place up like a house a fire.

Course there wasn't no fire in the cook stove at the time we done it. That is when we poked the towel in the flue.

Finally he thought up the joke that led, in a way, to the eventual disbanding and breakup of the Living God Fundamental Deviations Church which went---on next to us every Sunday---if it wasn't too cold, which is rare in Texas, being too cold I mean.

See, it was the cows. Dad went out and rounded up a big ole Jersey milk cow and we herded her up onto the porch and then into the kitchen. Well we just shut her up in the kitchen, shut the doors to the other rooms, put the screen back on the window and put back on the screen door the cow had knocked down and all such as that.

Dad got to laughing about what Kelley was gonna do and say and we were just going out the fence that run all the way around their house , to keep out cows, see, when Dad, he thought of something else to do to Kelley. We went out to the barn and got us some barbed wire and we went back and wired up the yard gate real good and tight. Dad, he done it just on the chance it would be dark and they'd have to climb over the fence besides everything else that would go on and so forth.

On the way home Dad and me laughed about what Kelley was gonna think when he found the cow in his kitchen and all that. The old car was slow and we took a long time gettin' home. Dad told me stories and all like that. It was a nice time. It kind'a reminded me of the time we put hogs, about a dozen of 'em in Ireley Reddin's cellar and tore the cellar steps out, course thats another story.

We didn't hear nothin' from Kelley about the cow and all that for a long time. Hardly nobody had telephones in those good old days. Finally we did hear the story from Donna, Kelley's wife. She come by the house and told Mom all about it. The bad part was that the neighbor who was supposed to milk the cows for Kelley while him and Donna was gone for a few days didn't know about the cow in
the kitchen. Natcherly the neighbors they thought that cow had run off or been stole. Natcherly the neighbor hadn't no way to know about the cow being locked up and hid in Kelley's kitchen and Dad and me, natcherly, had no way to know that Donna and Kelley was gonna be gone three days; so it wasn't our fault so to
speak, they was just gone and the cow was in the kitchen and there you have it. Who could be blamed for that?

See we were out there at Kelley's on a Sunday but they didn't get home 'til Tuesday night. They'd been plumb to south Texas. Well, by the time they got home and found out that fella, the neighbor, hadn't taken care of that cow, which he didn't know about, the one in the kitchen, well there was a mess. So to speak. Donna said it was dark and all when they got home and Kelley, he was plumb ready to go to Fist City by the time he got past that front gate that we had wired up. We had wired it up real good. He kind of tore up his fingers on the barbed wire. He was fightin' mad, she said. Saying how he was gonna get even with my Dad and all like that. And what made him think my Dad done it? 'Course he knowed it was my Dad right off.

Once past the gate, he went right in the kitchen door. You can sort of imagine it, I imagine.

It would be hard to describe.

Dark and all. First off he started slidin in that cow poop; a couple of days worth. That scared the cow right off. Then the cow let out a awful beller and, being thirsty and all tried to charge right out the door. Over Kelley of course. Being dark and all it spooked Kelley and he took a swing at the old Jersey cow in self defense. He hit alright, but it broke his fist and the cow, she just run right over him. Left him face down in three days of cow doo. Well you can imagine. Still that wasn't all.

See, the cow run over Donna out on the porch leading to the kitchen. Well, by the time Donna recovered and started on into the kitchen, Kelley, he was just gettin' up from being run over by the cow on which he had busted his fist. Donna, she was rushin' in to try help Kelley. Well Kelley, in the dark and all, seen somebody rushin' at him and he had no way of knowin' it was Donna and all so he just natcherly took a swing. 'Course he didn't know it was Donna. Knocked her cold, he did.

Well, you could go on for hours about that part of the story but there's not much to it, really.

After she come to and after Kelley got the butcher knife away from her and all, why that's about all of that part of the story and all.

Anyhow, the cow got tangled up in the fence from running too fast and Kelley was a while finding his wire cutters and all to cut her loose. And Donna, he had hit her so hard she couldn't remember where the spare lamp wicks were and was pretty confused in general. And the house was dark and all, without the lamps, and it seemed so bad and all, so they slept on pallets in the barn; on straw by the corn crib. Sometime in the night a rat or a mouse bit Kelley on the toe. That made Kelley madder than ever, and Donna said he sat up most of the night cussin' Dad; blamed the bite on him too.

By dinner time the next day they had the kitchen cleaned out pretty good, and then Donna tried to get ready so she could cook supper that evening. 'Course when she lit the fire in the cook stove, the smoke boiled out all over the house on account of that towel stuffed in the flue. Well, she got smoked out and just
gave up. She gave old Kelley some clabbered milk and cold cornbread to eat and that mad Kelley madder than ever. Myself, I like clabber and cornbread but it ain't for just everyone --- some folks don't like it.

Natcherly when the flue had cooled off and Kelley finally got the towel out, he was really fit to be tied again.

Since they were mad and all, they didn't come by our house for a long time, maybe two or three months. Well, Dad, he just kind of gritted his teeth and hunkered down, waiting and watchful like, you, cause he knew "it" was coming. We all knew it, we just didn't know when. He knew that Kelley would get him, one way or another. Too, I reckon the joke was a might stronger than he had figgered on it bein' and all. Anyway, we all knew "it" was coming.
Finally, one moonless night, Kelley and friend of his drove into town after dark. Without getting into all the details, this is what they done. They snuck up behind our house and into our back yard, picked up our outhouse toilet and carried it back some that the hole was right in front of the toilet door. It was quite a hole too, because ours was a two-seater (some say two holer) and the hole was twice as big as usual. Well, later, Kelley, he showed up at our front door, casual like, like he hadn't but just got there.

Well Kelley had brought Dad three quarts of home brew which Dad dearly loved to drink. Thing is my Aunt Murella was visiting us and she knew how to drink that home brew too. Well, they all got to settin'around on our front porch. Just settin' an' talkin' an sippin' and slapping misquitos and drinking beer and all.

Kelley, he was urging the beer on Dad and doing his best to slow Murella down. He told her drinkin' too fast would give her hiccups and all like that. Aunt Murella was real fat and she kept after that beer just like a hog after fresh slop. She nor nobody else never paid no attention to Kelley anyway. Looks like Dad would've caught on with all the fuss Kelley made trying to slow Murella down, but he didn't. Didn't catch on, that is.

After about five jelly glasses of that home brew, Aunt Murella excused her self to go to "Sears", which was the name of our toilet because of the catalog and all.

When she got out of the rockin' chair, Kelley quick jumped up and said that he had to get on, on home that is, and why didn't Aunt Murella just ride on home with him? Murella, she said she guessed her legs would still get acrost the street, caddy-corner, even if she did weigh almost three hundred odd pounds; and besides, she said, she'd want to stay a minute or two to show my Mom how do some new embroidery stitch right after she got back from "Sears."
She started off towards the back of the house and Kelley said it was gettin' late and all he just took off quick like to feed his cows and all that. Well, he hadn't no more than left than all to oncet this terrible screeching started up in the back yard. Like to have scared me to death.

We all took off to see what the matter was. Dad was 'bout ten feet in front of Mom, really pickin' 'em up an' puttin' 'em down. I was runnin' close behind. All the time this awful hollerin' went on and on. Not seein' nothin' in the yard, Dad, he made a beeline for the outhouse, figurin' that a spider or a snake had
cornered Aunt Murella.
I can still, to this day, see how funny it looked. Dad was just reachin' for the toilet door when he disappeared, smooth disappeared from view right in front of our very eyes. Well, it shook us up some and then bellerin' and hollerin' really started to come on, loud and clear. You know what happened, of course. Dad, he fell right in that nasty hole, smack on top of Murella and dunked her clean under. When she came up, she come up bellerin' like a stuck pig.

By the time we could really tell what was happenin', my Mom was sick and was pukin' all over the place, the squealing and hollerin' got louder and louder what with Dad trying to calm Aunt Murella and himself. The neighbors started comin' to see what was happening. And the cussing? You ain't heard the like
before or since! I had heard my Dad cuss before, but it wasn't nothing like that; Aunt Murella wasn't no piker at cussing neither.

The bad thing was we lived next door to that church. The Living God Fundamental Deviations Church, you know. Well, that night they were having one of those where everybody talks without tongues or whatever you call it, building up to snake handling, and then going on up to going barefoot without lipstick and all
that. They was a real strick bunch and all that.
The first thing you know the whole congregation is there with the preacher, most of them barefooted without lipstick and some not knowing whether to keep talkin' without tongues or not, an' others trying to get their shoes on and all such, an' my Dad just cussin' to beat the band, an' Murella squealin' like a stuck pig
and all that, an' Mom was a 'pukin', some of them was running around trying to find a match or a ladder, the babies- they all cried, the dogs-they all barked, and all such going on as that.

The preacher, he leaned down on the edge of the hole and asked if they was alright, kind of smart alecky like I thought. Dad says to him hell yes they was alright. The preacher said that Dad shouldn't cuss and that Aunt Murella had "gotten it" for wearing rouge." Dad, he told the preacher to mind his own damn business; the preacher told Dad the Lord would smite him. And Dad, he said,
"Smite hell! The Lord has pooped all over me already." That really upset the preacher and he commenced to ask my Dad and Aunt Murellla to repent, confess, be baptized, tithe, and all such. Dad got really mad and said some uglies to the preacher. That wild eyed kind of talk went on for a while with a few "Amens" thrown in by some congregationalists. I figured some of the amens was for the preacher but, it seemed to me, that some of them was for my Dad too.
Finally Mom convinced some of the men to get the water bucket rope out of the well. They passed it down the hole and Dad tied it around Aunt Murella. They all heaved while Dad pushed and after awhile they got Aunt Murella out of the hole.

Boy, if you don't think she looked rough, you should have smelled her. Those folks made room for her as if she was a mad dog loose. The ladies took Murella over to the rain barrel and held up some quilts and threw water on her and all such. Cleaning her up, you know.
Meantime the preacher, he passed the rope down to Dad and told him to have faith. Well, the preacher was standing there, all leaned over the hole, holdin' the rope, tellin' Dad, kind of smart-alecky like, how to tie the rope and all. Dad, he just looked up at the preacher, then he gave the rope a real good yank.

The Preacher, he went right in, head first.

It was terrible.

The air turned blue for miles around that damn hole. The cussin', it was a marvel to hear. What with them fightin' and cussin' in the hole, we thought we'd never get them out. When we did get them out, the preacher was still tryin' to punch it out with Dad and they were really going to Fist City, real hard like, plumb dead serious.
First it was just the preacher and my old man. But in an instant the congregation split up between those who liked the preacher and those who didn't. Then the neighbor men joined in, just kind of punchin' everybody, steady like, determined like, you know, determined to get a solid lick. For about ten minutes you couldn' blink without gettin' hit by a fist or a flying object which you preferred not to identify.

Well, Mom, she finally put a stop to it. She got herself one of those big, long
ugly sticks out of the wood pile and she laid it on 'em. Well, all to oncet, seemed like everybody's supper time had come. They cleared out fast like. One thing about Annie Turner, my mom, she knew how to lay the wood on so it would getcher attention.

Nobody had much to say the next day. The preacher, he lost a couple of teeth; Dad had one black eye and a broken nose; one neighbor's false teeth was lost down the hole. Lost unless he wanted to dig out the hole. One of the church deacons was unconscious in Rippey's icehouse at the grocery store. Dad said it didn't make a damn bit of difference cause they was all unconscious anyway.

The deacon come to on the second day, pretty cold from being in the ice house --- his fellow deacons each thought someone else was in charge of getting him out of the ice house; the Fundamental Deivations Church closed up and reopened as the Second Street Mexico City Food Cafe; course, we lived on Second Street.

Uncle Kelley, he heard what happened and come by the house to ask Dad to just fight it out, man to man, instead of having to worry about another joke. Dad, he made Kelley wait it out anyways.

It was about four months afterwards that Dad got a good one on Kelley, but the goat ran off with the dynamite and things got all out of hand, but that' another story. Like I said, everybody in my family is a big kidder an' always playing jokes and all that.

Death by CIPRO (or Thanks to Susan Turner and Bob Deering for Saving my Life on Jan 03, 2010

2010-01-04T13:46:00.000-08:00

As far as I am able to report, somewhat limited due to being alternately unconscious or absent, I died several times last night.

It was neither pretty, nor heroic. I took a prescribed antibiotic med and followed it with a cookie that I had not previously eaten. These two joined forces in an attempt to steal my conscous mind and leave me afloat in a sea of elctronic flashes which bounced unknown signals across the cosmos findling me worth little except as a transmission device or something of the sort.

Suzi had gone to Wal-Mart, now the thrice weekly drill to pick up my pain and other meds. This is not a happy chore for Suzi, nor for me. Neither us like, enjoy, or do well on drugs and we prefer to avoid.

When Suzi returned from Wal-Mart I was still "OK."

But shortly afterwards, I began to get confused. I began to thrash around in my recliner and lost track of elementary things like date, time, my name, etc. And, of course, to scare Suzi half to death. Hmmmm.

Suzi called Dr. Bob Deering and they, together, quickly decided I was having a toxic reaction to CIPRO. But then what? You can call the poison control center... God Bless those folks, they do what they can but perhaps they just do not know how to research or perhaps their middle management and operations staff are not sufficiently trianed. Anyone who know poison control knows PC will refer you to emergency and who knows what will happen or how long it will take?

Suzi launched out on side effect research for Dr. Bob and time flew by.... I don't recall much of this entire episode which moved on and on into the night... my main recall having to do with thirst and greater thirst accompanied by what I thought might be huge bolts of lightening.

I due course it became evident that some of our favorite products - - - magnesium, basic minerals, and water are top drawer for detoxing CIPRO... so on through the night Cindy and Dr. Br. Bob encourage Suzi to keep me awash in water and magnesium and basic minerals.

All through the night Suzi is reassuring me that I will make it whilst I, in some uncomprehending dream state see the distant lightening; hear the gathering thunder, and try to grasp an interpertation of the ill formed shapes that try to gather round me.

Hours go by. My body goes stiff and sore in my recliner. I want up but things conspire to prevent me from rising.

Between times there are voices... the professionals whose only stance seems to be that death is the logical outcome versus the opposition or life supporting crowd. The life supporters uniformy feel that if you give the body some good food things will work out.

Suzi and I have always felt if you let your body have real food instead of a shopping cart full of high fructose corn syrup, MSG,and such, that you can indeed win.

Dawn came slowly. The thunder drawing into the distance with reluctance; the lightening tamping back with hesitation; my mind questioning my own location

Monday, was a long, long day during which I slept fitfully. Glad to find my self alive.

Dr Bob, Cindy. Suzi. Please accept my thanks for jerking me back from the dark edge.

Bob and Cindy, life supporting people are there for you at:

Home Bio-Emotional Neutralization Betar Intensives Phone Sessions Testimonials About us Contact LinksSPIRIT EMERGENCE OF TAOS • Phone: (575) 751-7050 • info@spiritemergenceoftaos.com

Terry Turner
A Living Curmudgeon !!!

BlogThis!

2010-01-04T13:45:00.000-08:00

BlogThis!

2009-12-15T18:15:00.001-08:00

Cancer relief with WLA 132 and, the black salve, Aloe Mystery

Dear friends and family,

Just a brief update to let you know that on Monday I had a mega dose of radiation, a week's worth, very excessive mega blast to try to control the pain in my left femur/pelvic area. This continuous pain is the pain that makes it nearly impossible for me to sit, stand, walk, or move or at. I can lie still and flat with some success, but not much.

I requires all the physical and mental strength that Suzi and I can muster to do the most elementary things, such as to get out of bed and try to make it to the bathroom before diarrhea overpowers me... very unpleasant, at best and from a physical standpoint I can only say thanks, for some of us, to my genetic poll which allows me the extra physical strength to leverage myself along on crutches and walker.

Suzi, a very petite gal and the light of my life as you know, from some deep resources, gets the strength to help me propel myself upward and makes the difference as to whether I am be somewhat functional or a bed cabbage.

Suzi, now attends all aspects of the business, housekeeping, cooking, bed issues, toilet issues and all billing and shipping and, I assure you is deserving of the greatest empathy and respect for the enormous challenges she faces in dealing with my issues.

I know that some of you think of coming to see, and I would really enjoy seeing any and all of you, but you have to realize that I am absent a good deal. Lack of energy and the extensive morphia of pain medications keeps me sort of in an extended sleep stage and I am not much of a visitor being unable to maintain a coherent connection with the visitors.

I want to also mention to you, if you know anyone suffering with cancer issues, that to the extent that I can contribute information or contacts, I would like to as it is now the only thing left me... our financial situation is, as you can imagine, rather severe due to the totally unreasonable costs of all forms of conventional, allopathic, alternative, or integrated medicine.. we are, to the extent possible, affordable, and accessible, doing all of these things. There are many new alternative things to be attempted but they tend to be rather costly. And there are old things that should be tried... radiography treatment which was used successfully in WWI and WWII among other periods... but, even a hundred or two hundred a week for a service, pill, or shot adds up and the first thing you know you are confronted with thousands of dollars in expenses. Nevertheless, If I can share I would like to.

In terms of great good, I want to again mention something that every person getting radiation needs to know.I started radiation last July and I did get relief from those California sessions under the supervision of Dr Chen who was brought in by Dr. Walter Kim and Dr. Issels of the Issels Medical Center. Later, here in Texas I am taking additional radiation under the direction of Dr. Kerley. It is notable, while no comments on it, that during the treatments, early in the morning, well before the afternoon radiation, I liberally applied Aloe Mystery to the target radiation area. Then after the treatment, I again liberally applied Aloe Mystery to the target radiation area. If you do not know it, please be aware that radiation kills cells by burning them. As much of this treatment hit on my low back, pelvic kidney area I can tell you that it can give the the sense of producing heated urine --- though I did not have that experience, thank God, and your skin is burned sometimes like the effect of an extensive chemical, fire, or solar burn.

However, apparently due to my regular topical application of Aloe Mystery, I have not had the difficultly of dealing with any sense of burn pain, nor do I have anything but a very, very shadowy suggestion of a burn area on my body...only by very careful observation can you determine a visible burn demarcation on my skin. All of my medical doctors asked me to remove my clothes so that they could see the target radiation area when I told them about my results with Aloe Mystery and, of course, said nothing, other than it could not hurt ---- hurt? Good grief! It seems to eliminated the burn. None of the integrated or alternative doctors were surprised at the fact that I was free of the misery and discomfort of radiation burn.

The other thing that every cancer person needs to know about chemotherapy and radiation is that it can ordinarily really distress the digestive system and often in a very significant way. There are, obviously, many forms of chemotherapy and there are many different ways to radiate. Mostly one discovers unpleasant side effects which often will include stomach upset, nausea, indigestion, loss of appetite, inability to tolerate some or all foods and so forth. As I was well aware of this, prior to beginning all treat I began taking an internal liquid food supplement which is called WLA 132. WLA 132 is a very highly concentrated whole leaf aloe vera produced under very special and highly controlled circumstances. I have been supplementing my food with WLA 132 since June or July of this year, 2009. Apart from changes that I elected to make (I quit eating cheese for example as I consider all diary products to be bad for lung cancer) I have been able to enjoy every meal served, eat anything that I wanted, and have had no bad side effects from either radiation, chemotherapy, or other treatments. I think you can see, therefore, why I am such an advocate of these two products.

These products are the result of decades and work by Edna Hennessee of Dream Valley/CSL. Edna early in her career realized the devastating effect that agricultural sprays, farm-ranch-livestock run off would have on her beloved aloe plants. To produce the finest, purest, most logically organic aloe on the planet, Edna built enormous greenhouses to protect her aloe from everything possible, even drifting sprays ( and it is the ocean of bad sprays across the fields of much South Texas and northern old Mexico fields that makes hesitate to suggest any aloe except Edna's to any one. Let me stress that I did at one time work for Edna, many long years ago, but I have no interest in her company and these products are not a profit center of any sort for me or Suzi... we are just very enthused about these great cancer aids. To order, to ask for important information, to get a great book on aloe vera written by Edna's son, Odus Hennessee, please call and talk to Edna or to Areta at 800-364-2182. Both these great ladies are an inspiration to all and I sincerely ask you to reflect on those doctors, of any sort, and those people who may cancer challenges that would benefit from the use of Aloe Mystery and WLA 132; take a moment to do it right now, please.

I think it will be clear to most of my correspondents that the importance of organic, fresh, foods are vital to all health issues. I also know that some of my vegan friends and family do eat or approve of eggs. But I do. And I want to thank my brother, Brod, and his lovely life, Susan, for sending me straight from the farm a few dozen free range eggs ... the yolks stand tall, bright, firm, and the eggs are simply delicious. What a great addition to any meal. Today, I had the eggs with steel cut oats with olive oil and turmeric.. a great anti-cancer dish, in my opinion, especially if you are very generous with the turmeric.

I thank all of you for your kindness in reading my posts, in sending me encouraging words and prayers, and other often more material support. In these days, there is little so wonderful as a kind and encouraging word from an old friend or a family member. Thanks for all that you do for me and others in this stressful world and lest we forget it, we are not alone. Many people face and worse challenges than we do. May God richly bless them and you in all things.

Terry Turner, less curmudgeonly by the day.

This post was delivered in part, previously, by email.

Photograph credit. The photo was taken by the Dream Valley Green House Manager. It is Suzi inspecting an aloe vera leaf just ready for harvest --- rich in minerals, unique saccharides, and totally protected in these giant green houses from a polluted environment --- these rich leaves are the source of Aloe Mystery, the black salve, and the extraordinarily rich WLA-132.

November 17,2009

2009-11-15T20:01:00.000-08:00

Dear Family and Friends,

Many of you know from our personal conversations that November 17 has, for decades, been a memorable date in my life marked by many events and people associated with that date. I have, for example, been attacked by a buffalo on November 17, I had businesses fail on November 17, my mother was born on November 17, and so forth.

In a nutshell, next week will be eventful for me. On Tuesday, November 17, 2009, I will have another PET Scan during the last week of my current round of radiation. It will provide the first overall good opportunity to assess the road ahead and the current situation.

I think most of you know that I had another pain event, more than I can to recall and I had to begin radiation on my pelvic area last Monday, November 9 and the treatment will end this Friday, November 20. At present I am nearly out of pain.

It will take the radiation oncologists a few days to get the interpretation of the scan reduced to writing so, effectively, I won't have any facts to report until the week of November 23.

I am very optimistic about the likely results of the test but, though I think I need not say it, I certainly solicit and welcome your prayers.

It is difficult to discover the "good" in all this but, perhaps, I shall be permitted the opportunity to share my concept of an inexpensive cancer treatment with the world. As I have previously mentioned the treatment I have thinking of is based on a product that we designed and marketed many years ago, Dual Source Selenium. We no longer private label or sell Dual Source Selenium and it is, these days, commonly available in most OTC situations. The final treatment concept will have a small selection of a few other unique but affordable ingredients and is something that one could actually make at home without much effort. Considering that fifty thousand dollars hardly makes a dent in modern cancer treatment, I am doing research as fast as I can on my "home made" solution.

I know some of you are concerned that I am not my usual self and tend to be very delinquent in emails. I must plead a lack of energy. I do answer as many things as I can get to but energy levels are quite low and my daily treatment schedule is rather demanding. Also, I plead the same for Suzi who has to help with my care, cover my duties as well as her own and, I can assure you, it is no easy task.

Also, for the record, we are in Texas and I am being treated in Mt. Pleasant, Texas about 20 miles east of Mt. Vernon.

Terry
903-285-6661
408 Yates St.
Mount Vernon, Texas 75457

Water, the distant water

2009-10-08T00:42:00.000-07:00

Copyright, Terry Turner, 2009

Following are a few remarks that pertained to my experiences of one sort or another in Old Mexico. A few of these were addressed to family, friends, and, a few to my long-suffering brother-in-law. The events apply, roughly from 1968 to 1975 when I was in permanent residence in Jalisco, near Guadalajara, and later circa 1991 when living briefly in Mexico City.
Of course, we should all note that most of my impressions are now a quarter of century old and much has changed.

I mainly wrote these with a view to trying to explain the “flavor” of Mexico because it was often difficult for my business associates and for tourists to understand the reality of day-to-day life and business for those of us in permanent residence.

I should hasten to add this comment. I lived in Mexico about seven years altogether, and I regard Jalisco as my second home. I have Godchildren and friends as dear to me as my own family there. I surely do not want you to conclude that I dislike Mexico or Mexicans, even though I have a variety of “crow” to pick with the Government of Mexico. To be clear, I love Mexico, Mexican culture, Mexican customs, Mexicans, and Mexican food.... and the Mexican attitudes about family and friends which make Gringos seem primitive indeed... and speaking of food, I would gladly pay twenty-five dollars for a fistful of carnitas from a road side stand in Jalisco.

That having been said, here are a few brief lines from what I often think of as the “stone age.” The Stone Age, of course, is not a time, for I am not that old, but it is rather a state of mind.

In 1991, while living near the Zona Rosa, in a small penthouse that afforded a grand view of assorted laundry, large polka dot underwear in particular that belonged, I suppose, to a man who must have weighed near about four hundred pounds. I never saw him, but I saw a good deal of his underwear over a period of a year or so.

One evening, about nine pm, my wife and I were feeling ill, we were out of bottled water in our little penthouse, and beginning to feel a bit dehydrated due to a slight fever. I called the hotel manager, Senor Carmona, for help. What follows is the dialogue that I jotted down that very evening.

When he answered the phone, I said, “Senor Carmona, I’m sorry to bother you so late but my wife an I are ill and we need water before we become dehydrated.”

Senor Carmona, clearing his throat, said, “ Mr. Turner, did you have a nice day?” To which I replied, “Yes, thank you, very nice, but we do not have any water in the suite.”

“Water?” Carmona said thoughtfully. To which I replied, a bit edgy now, “Water, yes we need water!”

Carmona was silent a moment, seeking a comfort zone with the English tongue, then said, “What kind of water?” To which I replied I with a little exasperation, “Any kind of clean water.”

“Do you want the water in the little green bottles?” Carmona inquired. “Yes! Yes!” I said, “The green bottle kind will be fine. The maids are supposed to leave some green bottles of water, but they did not.”

“Yes. You want the green bottles?” Carmona patiently replied.

“Yes! I want the green bottles!” I was near to shouting.

“Yes, yes, the green bottles. But we do not have any green bottles.” Carmona stated matter-of-factly.

This reminded me that I had asked him to see that the hotel kept a large five-gallon bottle water in the room. I had asked for it when we took the accommodations and some two months later, having twice paid the deposit for the glass jug, we finally received it but it was rarely filled with water. I said with a bit of anger, “Senor Carmona, you are supposed to keep a big bottle of water in our room, but you never do.”

Very firmly, but politely, he replied, “The bell boy brought a big jug of water to your room only two weeks ago. Why don’t you drink it? It is good water.”

“Senor Carmona, we drank all of that water. You know I make coffee with that water. We don’t have any water of any kind right now and we need some water, right now!” I was getting rather red around the edge of my ears and the volume of my voice was beginning to float down to street level from my lodgings.

“Perhaps,” he said, “you would like to send the bell boy to buy some water for your wife?”

“Yes! Yes!” I cried out, “let’s send the bell boy for some water.”

Soothingly Senor Carmona replied, “What kind of water?” To which I replied, “The green bottle kind will be fine.”

“Senor Turner, it is very hard,” he said, “ to get that kind of water this late at night.”

“Fine!” I said, even though nothing was fine, “Just get some other kind.”

“They say the kind form Tehucan, the water with gas in it, is very good for a bad heart.” Senor Carmona carefully explained.

“Great!” I shouted, “Great! It will be good for my stroke!”

“Please?” replied Carmona, a bit confused, “Please?”

“Never mind, never mind!” I said, “The kind with the gas will be fine. Just tell the bell boy to bring six bottles of the kind with the gas.”

“Senor Turner, “ came the calm reply of the ever patient Senor Carmona, “Senor Turner, the bell boy cannot do it right now.” To which I replied, “OK, OK, later will be OK! Just get it as soon as possible.”

“Very well.” He sighed, glad to have the exchange near an end, “Tomorrow Fausto will bring the water.”

“No!” I shouted, “NO! Not tomorrow! I need the water tonight!”

Firmly Carmona replied to me as if to a wanton child, “Fausto can’t bring your water tonight.”

“Senor Carmona,” said I, “Senor Carmona, why can’t he bring it tonight?”

“Senor Turner, please, Fausto is not here tonight.” To which I demanded, “Why isn’t Fausto here?
“Senor Turner,” came the patient reply, “It is his day off.”

“Mr. Carmona," I shouted, “yesterday you said couldn’t find my shirts because yesterday was Fausto’s day off!”

“Yes, Senor Turner, we will find your shirts, probably tomorrow. But today Fausto’s friend died and left a widow and six children. So, naturally, Fausto has to help them. Perhaps a person like yourself would like to contribute to the funeral to help this poor widow and her children?”

Desperately trying to control my anger and frustration, I mustered a bit of calmness and said, “Mr. Carmona, I must have water tonight. Will you tell me where to get it?”

‘Yes! Yes, of course. I am always pleased to be of service to you and your lovely wife. We want all of our guests to happy.” Carmona cheerfully replied.

“We are very happy here, “ I replied, “but where can I get some water at this late hour?” To which Senor Carmona quickly replied, “The Holiday Inn won’t give you any water unless you are a guest.”

“Yes, but I am not going to the Holiday Inn,” I said, wondering why he even mentioned the Holiday Inn that was just a couple of blocks down the street. “I just want to go to a store, to a tienda.”

“Do you know where the farmacia is?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, “there is a farmacia, a drug store, next to this hotel.”

“Oh no, Senor, “ he replied, “not the farmacia next door. I mean the farmacia down the street next to the taco stand that sells hog’s head tacos. Those tacos are delicious.”

“Thank you, “ I said, nearly exhausted from the conversation, “Thank you. I will go down there and get some water.”

“Senor Turner,” I braced myself as he said, “you cannot bring water from the farmacia by the hog’s head taco stand right now.”

“Why not?” I was near to screaming.

“Senor Turner,” he said calmly, “they have closed since eight o’clock this evening. They have been closed almost two hours.”

Feeling very frustrated I said, “Senor Carmona, I really must have some water.”

“Senor Turner,” he said with a good deal of cheer, “I will personally take care of it! And tomorrow you will have your water! Some green bottles and the big bottle too! Please rest well; it is best thing for a happy heart. Good night, Senor Turner.”

The click of the terminated phone call was loud in my ear and the water, like many desired things in this life, was very distant.

Old Crow and the Invisible Crow

2009-10-08T00:14:00.000-07:00

Copyright, Terry Turner, 2009

Old Crow flew down to inspect my newly displayed
flag.

"War!" he cawed, "War!"

Young Crow landed by him and loudly barked "War! War!
War!"

Limping Crow barked from a nearby tree, then flew down
joining the other crows on the sign post which
supported my flag.

Mostly they stared at the flag and occasionally glared
at me --- they still are not sure that I fully
acknowledge their ownership of the territory
hereabouts.

Finally Young Crow, weary of the unfamiliar war word,
asked, "What is war anyway?

"War!" cried the old crow, "War!" then he shuffled out,
tenuously, from the sturdy sign post to the more
fragile flag pole and, seeing that the thin pole
did not fail him or the flag, he settled down over the
field of blue to have a good luck at the stars. Old Crow
had lived long enough to know that many things are
edible which may not seem so on first inspection.

"War," he finally replied, "war is a bloody human game.
When they play war there is plenty for crows to eat.
Here in these very mountains my great, great,
grandfather once feasted on an Indian chief for a whole
winter. The humans often have given us such sacrifices
and they like killing it seems."

"War! War," the crows cried in unison, "War!"

Young Crow said, "I have never seen a war. Why war
they?"

Crippled Crow barked. "The human fools do not believe
in one God. They believe in many Gods. Fools, they!
Fools who do not yet know of the Great Crow, the
only God. Being ignorant of the Great Crow, humans
fight and die."

"Die?, Die," the word seemed to shock Young Crow, "die.

What is it to die like they do?"

"You can never know that, " said Old Crow, "they die,
but we crow live forever! When we crow grow old, we
become thin and flat, but we never die, we just slowly
disappear. But war, ah war, war will keep all crow nice
and fat!"

"War! War! War!, Bloody war!" they cried, "Bloody war!"

Old Crow, found the bright white stars inedible.

He flew away, looking for something to keep him nice
and fat, After all, being an old crow, he knew that
neither he nor any crow within his long memory had
ever spoken with an invisible crow. For that reason he
wanted to remain nice and fat.

Note: I wrote the original of this in Taos, NM September ’01

The sainthood of the cow, Andora, and how it happened

2009-09-26T15:07:00.000-07:00

Copyright, Terry Turner, 2009

Preface and Apology to Readers
If it is your intent to read the following, I can only be amazed at your lack of discrimination and, further, apologize to those of you who are possessed of any literacy and those of you who possess any command of the English language. The following is an affront to all gentile folks, to all the classics ever written and to all of the great authors who every lived. I advise you to skip this and get yourself a good Mark Twain book or perhaps you could find an old Don Marquis regarding Archy and Mehitabel. Any one can read the following, but why would they?

Why We cannot Attend the Funeral
The funeral for Anchell's cow is to be Thursday. Cows, of course, strictly speaking are not church members but Andora, the cow, was partial to the Wednesday night bingo supper at the Catholic Church and always showed up there to help clean up the salad scraps and such. Of course, it was not the Catholic Church. We just call it the Catholic Church because it was for nearly a hundred years and then they up and built a new Catholic church with lots of them religious towers and windows and free parking and such.

The old Catholic Church was abandoned for a while until a self declared Russian Orthopedic priest, Javier Obitem, rented it and took to preaching. He was quite a talker and folks begin to go to church there just hear him talk. He could really string works together just like some ladies are natural at making gravy. Priest Javier Obitem said he would at least come by and say a few words over Andora on behalf of Old Lady Anchell when it come time to bury her; that is to bury her cow which is the dead one. Mrs. Anchell is just real old, not dead.It was a dreadful outcome to the events which took place at Buford's Barbecue and Barbershop the previous Saturday. None of us suspected it, of course, and certainly not me, for I was standing by innocent like to this whole and entire affair. It would not have happened I guess if Troy had not been there showing off his long black powder rifle. He has one called a buffalo gun. It is really long and shoots a bullet about the size of small golf ball. I would say it was more likely an elephant gun but then we don't have elephants down this way no ways. Troy says if he hit a phone pole dead center with that rifle that pole would be cut clean in two. I believe it, now. Troy Baumgardner is sort of a show off anyway and if he was not an honored World War I Vet, I would give him a good knock on the head, but he does have some medals and you can't just ignore that. After all, he helped protect my freedom and that has allowed me to continue to vote for some of the lyingest and most corrupt politicians that ever lived, and presidents too.Dragon Breath Seasoning, the Gift Sets the Tone
Of course that would not have mattered. About Troy being a show off. If I had not taken my surprise package that I got in the mail with me. Of course if I had just gone home and left the mail for my wife to open it would not have happened but, even though I cannot stand the smell of burning hair, every once in a while I want a good barbecue sandwich. Burford's barbecue sandwiches are not good but he has the only barbecue for sale in the county; otherwise why would any one buy it? I surely would not unless I needed a haircut or some barbecue.

Any way you can see how it happened. While I was in Buford's waiting on my barbecue sandwich and trying to avoid the hair storm made when Buford is cutting hair, I noticed I had not opened my surprise package. Herman Handers, the local county blacksmith, was setting next to me so I sez to myself I will open it and show it to Herman. But while I was opening it Herman got up to go to the privy and I was just settin’there looking at my surprise, a bottle of Dragon's Breath Smoke Seasoning sent by my brother, Mark. It surely looked good, but you can not tell what these things taste like by looking at them. Then, too, my brother is somewhat of a joker; so you can’t exactly take things just at their own face value—they might not be. It is like Cousin Whitsitt says, in our family a little caution don’t hurt none and always get your non-disclosures first and all like that. So, with that in mind, I just opened up the Dragon’s Breath and dumped a fair amount of it into Herman's barbecued beans. If Herman liked it, I knew I would too.

Well, right out of the blue Herman came back and commenced back to eating his beans and suddenly all to oncet to leapt up and commenced to choking and turned violet red like. Well I flung a glass of water at him to help calm him down and Buford shouts at me what did you do Herman's beans? Why, I wonder did he ast me that? I was just setting there.

The Greater Misfortune; Andora Shot and Killed
That shout was what is knowed in literature as the greater misfortune. Old Troy, who had been dozing and dreaming of his days in the army in Europe in the Great War, heard the shout and thought the Nazis were attacking. He grabbed that big long buffalo rifle and let off a blast that clean removed a square foot of the back wall of the barber shop including a Life magazine cut out picture of John Fitzgerald Kennedy; then come the lesser misfortune, or maybe it was another of them greater misfortunes.

As Andora, the cow, was walking past the back of Buford’s Barbecue and Barbershop at the exact moment Troy fired off his rifle, that golf ball sized shot went through the wall and smooth hit her smack between the eyes and she fell over on the spot, I seen her through the hole that was oncet smiling JFK. She, Andora, gave a few quivers and then stuck her tongue out like she wanted to say goodbye or something nice like that and it was over. The quivers gave it up and she just laid there. I hate to see a cow dead especially if it is one that I knowed like I did, of course, know Andora when she was alive.

In the meantime Troy was trying to reload his thunder boomer, my dog, Diogee, out on the curb was howling to beat the band, but with us all sort of in shock like, and with Troy not having his reloading tools, he took a look at us and said the center couldn’t hold with the likes of us. He, dashed off, as fast as an old codger like him could, to get his reloading tools. I remember as he went out the door, he sez to me, glaring right in my face, “You hold this position, no matter what.” And off he went, dodging Nazi bullets in his mind as he went. Well, when Old Troy got himself and that buffalo canon out the door and down the street, I can tell you we all took a deep breath. But, that was when Herman saw my bottle of Dragon Breath and he sez whose is this? And like a durn fool I sez it is mine. This turned out to be the tragedy and the beginning of the end in more ways than one. Anyway, it was not my fault. Who could have knowed that Dragon’s Breath was hot enough to melt concrete.

Why I Cannot Attend the Funeral
So that is the reason I may not attend Andora's funeral on Thursday. But I do expect to be out of the hospital in a day or two.

It is always a mistake to offend a blacksmith like Herman. Especially as he can lift his anvil and put it in the back of a truck if he needs to. If you have not moved an anvil, I guess that remark won’t carry much weight except that I can tell you it is doubtful if that Swartzandknecker California fellow can lift Herman’s anvil.

When my fingers heal up to where they will write, I intend to send my brother a get ready note. After what he done to me with that Dragon’s Breath, I will have to be revenged on him. I would call him but my jaws will are still wired for a time. I imagine he knows it is coming any how and he will try to be ready. Anybody can see I will have to revenge on that Dragon Breath which a fool can tell ought to be treated like a military weapon and not passed around like some seasoning. What if a child had a holt of that stuff? I had a first cousin, Linda Jo, I still do, that gave her own self a rubdown with Tabasco Sauce when she was just two or three years old. Her hair is still red and anyone can tell she ain’t over that Tabasco after more’n fifty years have passed away.But, probably, you can tell that we all enjoy a good joke in my family.

Jerry Don, Mrs. Anchell, and the Pink Pearl
Well you know how hospitals are. My insurance was not very good so they doctor came in and told me it was cash on the barrel head and that I could be discharged and that I did not feel as bad as I looked like I did. You could not tell by me but I guess that is what the doctor gets paid to know. I thought I was banged up pretty good but he sent me on home.

Buford come up to the house the next day to see how I was doing and to feed, Diogee, my old dog. Being a customer of Buford’s Barbershop and Barbecue put me high on his list of well wishing duties as Buford does not now have and never did have very many customers. I mean, you know, how many people can stand the smell of burning hair with their coffee or hamburger? You have to be pretty determined and fairly hungry to get through a dining experience there.

Anyways Buford was telling me that Jerry Don Rivers was going to bulldoze out the grave for Andora, it was because Mrs. Anchell had been his third grade teacher before he dropped out and later become a GED. And because Mrs. Anchell helped him get his bulldozer operator’s license with the help of help of her Pink Pearl eraser and, of course, as she could spell good too. She as gooder than anybody at filling out forms, and applications, and such. Of course she had lots of practice at reading and writing, not to say spelling too. (Note: Before the advent of computers tablets, pencils, and the famous Pink Pearl Eraser were common tools for students and teachers).

Searching for Andora’s Casket
He said that Old Mrs. Anchell was hoping for a casket and had called to find out if the hardware store had any large caskets or piano crates. But Mr. Bo Edwards, at the Hardware, Fresh Produce, and Used Mattress Emporium told her that, due to Andora’s notable girth, all the boxes seemed too small.

He also noted that as far as he knew no piano had ever been unloaded in the county but he had heard that one had been delivered in Clay County to a funeral home that was in business to make money. Anyways that piano had been delivered nearly ten years previous. It was pretty clear that there weren’t no free boxes lying around the size of Andora.

So Mrs. Anchell decided on an alfresco service after which the bulldozer would just nudge Andora into the grave and then tenderly doze the dirt over her. Then Don says to me how nice it was that Javier, the priest, was going to say a few words over Andora. And he was telling me that though Andora had always been a Catholic, so to speak, he did not think she would mind being buried by a self appointed priest like Javier. Jerry Don said he thought Andora liked the old Catholic church because cows sort of knowed that Catholics are supposed to eat fish. You can see right there that he is no rocket science by any means. Anyways, as I said to him, Andora had been accustomed to going to Baptist Fundamental Deviations Church meetings and I knew for a fact that up until about two years ago Andora had been a firm Baptist cow.

Andora Quits the Fundamentalists
The way she become a Catholic was that the priest, Javier got into an argument at the Three Deuce Bingo and Domino Emporium about membership with Donald Elliott, the Baptist Choir Master and Part Time Assisting Preacher. Old Don told Javier that they attracted more cattle to the Baptist Fundamental Deviations Church than people showed up at the Catholic Church. The outcome of that discussion was not pretty but a few stitches covered every thing up pretty quick. Preacher fights have to be quick and not too protracted like. If they are fast enough nobody takes no notice.

But it was not long after that when we begun to notice that some Russian Orthopedics down at the old Catholic church were wagging some of their home grown vegetables to their church and, there being an excess of vegetables, they were sort stacked around out back of the Church. Well you can just imagine what happened and it did.

And that is how Andora became a Catholic and quit the Baptist Fundamental Deviations Church.

“What happened?” Buford sez to me. “What did happen?” Well I sez what happened is every loose goat, mule, horse, cow, duck, chicken, and guinea fowl began to show up at the Russian Orthopedic Church. And one day, Andora who had been napping under the pecan tree at Baptist Fundamental Deviations Church, got up and walked down to the old Catholic Church. Seeing as there was plenty of fresh vegetables there, she lay down by a big pile of turnips and quit the Baptists on the spot. That is how she become a so-called Catholic cow, due to the old name of the church; nobody could say that she avowed her self to be a Russian Orthopedic or that she even knowed Javier personal like. And, anyway, whoever heard of a cow that did not like fresh turnips. I like them myself.

Javier Obitem Smoozes the Crowds
Then with folks hangin’ all around the Catholic Church, hunting their pigs and such, Javier just naturally smoozed them into being Russian Orthopedics and joining up at the old Catholic church. Some said he was teaching Cataclysms for any donation. Anybody knows that them Cataclysms are a sure short cut to heaven cause you could just sort of jump over the Purgative and go straight in the front door of Heaven, so to speak. Any one could see by the animals that it was the most popular church in town and some say they serve beer in the basement on bingo nights, though I never knew Andora to take a drank, never.

I would say a lot of folks liked Javier Obitem whether they got a free beer or not. But that is how Andora became a Catholic. I can say I have personal never seen an empty beer bottle anywheres around that church.

Miracles in Quick Succession
You wonder what happened and how this all goes on. Well, n Tuesday morning, just two days, before Andora’s funeral, Old Mrs. Anchell noticed that the large corn that had been on her smallest toe on her left foot had fallen off. She had spent a small fortune at the County Seat, where they have a drug store, to buy corn remover. Bottle after bottle patiently applied had never affected the wart but the remover did seem to eat out holes in her shoes where the corn plaster met with her shoe; and of course the hole provided some relief. Looking at the newly missing corn, she thought to herself, “A miracle!” Then she drifted off to sleep and dreamed that Andora spoke to her and told her that she would find her will stuck in the back of the family Bible.

When Mrs. Anchell awoke, she remembered her dream, clearly. She struggled to her feet and dashed, slowly, across the room to find her own will, sure enough, stuck in the back of the Bible just where she had put it some years previously and where, in fact, it had been every time she thought to check on it.

She thought to herself, if Andora had been a person she would have been a saint. Of course a cow is not a person, not even a Catholic cow, and everyone knows it.

Andora Becomes Anchell’s Guardian Angel
Well, that was just the beginning. Mrs. Anchell got her breakfast made without burning herself or anything. Then her bowels moved, in what you would say was a sort of spontaneous fashion, and we all knew that her bowels sometimes did not move for days.

Then in, short order her old radio began to work, and she found her eye glasses; she got a letter from her sister printed so big that she could read it without her eye glasses. It was a miraculous day in the life of Old Mrs. Anchell. That night she went to bed thinking that the spirit of her beloved cow, Andora, was working to help her; she drifted off to sleep comforted that while she had lost a good milk cow, she had gained an angelic guardian.

In her dreams, Anchell found that Andora could sing, preach, dance, and play the harp, and her dreams took on a much satisfying character.

Miracle Behind Buford’s Barbershop and Barbecue
On Wednesday, in preparation for Thursday funeral, Jerry Don Rivers, licensed bulldozer operator and GED graduate, went over to Schumacher’s Seed, Feed, and Used Mattress Store and borrowed their forklift. We all knowed it would take some kind of powerful lifting one way or another to get Andora up to the grave site as a dead cow ain’t no feather and Andora darn sure was not a wheelbarrow candidate. And anyway, as Buford had noted, the tourism dropping by to see Andora had dropped off, especially since, construction had begun on the new Sno Cone shed at the other end of town. You can’t beat a good construction site to attract lookers. So he was ready for Andora’s removal.

Anyways here comes old Jerry Don proud as you please on the fork lift and getting all positioned to slide the blades, easy like, under Andora. But you can hardly imagine our feelings when, just as he give her the barest nudge with the dozer, Andora lets out a bellow, jumps up to her feet, gives her head a good shake and the golf ball sized bullet smooth come flying out of a dent between her eyes. She bellowed a time or two whilst looking right at me and Buford, then Andora took off in a little trot towards the Catholic Church. It was a blessing that old Mrs. Anchell was not there for it was a heart stopping event to see a dead cow that you have knowed just jump up from being dead and take off like they was alive and all.

Old Jerry Don just set on his fork lift, slack jawed-like and I could tell Buford was in shock. I know. For I have never known him not to be the instant authority on everything, but for once he was silent and there, on the ground, between us lay the golf ball sized lead buffalo ball that we had supposed had killed Andora outright.

Dang, if that ain’t a miracle
The aroma of barbecue and the faint smell of burnt hair filled the air. Buford, leaned down and gingerly picked up the black powder bullet, holding it aloft as though to be sure God could see it, he said, “Dang, if that ain’t a miracle, I never saw none.”

The Lack of Informed Opinions and Miracles
The following day, which would have been Andora’s funeral except that she wasn’t dead, found Buford’s full of folks needing a hair cut but probably only one or two that would be willing to pay for the insult to their persons. Buford was not exactly the best barber in the world neither but he was the only barber in the county, why else would anyone let him cut their hair. But, that is not the point; the point is that we were all talking about Andora’s miraculous recovery from having been killed by World War I vet Troy Baumgardner and his black powder buffalo rifle which had blown the John Kennedy picture clean through the back wall of the barbershop.

First there was the issue that Andora had recovered but now she was bellerin’ all night and keeping all the dogs upset and making the cats nervous. Some said the chickens would stop laying eggs if Andora did not quiet down. Then there was the issue brung up by Lew Jorgen, former ROTC Army Captain and high school graduate. He said he figured Andora’s brain had been damaged and that was why she was bellowing so, though it did not interfere with her enjoyment of the free produce round about the Catholic Church. I could not stand by and have Andora called brain damaged but Lew claimed the shot between the eyes which had failed to kill her had probable jarred her brain around.

The opinions, none of which were actual informed opinions, flew betwixt and among us like so many birds in a storm and the only actual not made up fact was that the committee formed by Catholic ladies to inform Mrs. Anchell had done so. That is they told her of Andora’s recovery and how she was bellerin. Then Mrs. Anchell and several of the ladies had exclaimed, “It’s a miracle!”

The Lady Vet
Due to the complaints about the bellerin, Mrs. Anchell had sent for the County Vet, Lisbeth Thurgood, and she was expected none too soon, allowing for travel time from the county seat. Miss Lisbeth was a caution as she was a vet and unmarried, and childless and, naturally, no one would call on her for doctoring cattle unless they had too; why would they? Her being an unmarried single woman acting just like a regular Vet. Even though she was a Vet and apparently had never lost a patient, she was popular enough to be invited to socials, parties, teas, and fund raising events which were the whole and entire cultural frame work of our county as there was absolutely nothing else to do except eat barbecue and get your hair cut which nobody wanted to do no way. I have been to some of them fund raising events to eat but I was never too impressed with the food unless it was made by the ladies at the Geneology Social Club. They were established cooks and several amongst them could swing a mean frying pan, and all of those gals made their own pie crust… none of that Dough Boy rubber dough for those gals.

Andora and the Vet
As the sun rose higher, folks began to drift off for their lunch, no one wanting to eat at Buford’s as they had other choices. And it was late afternoon before the Vet, Lisbeth Thurgood, arrived. I went down to the Catholic Church so’s I could help her round up and coral Andora for her psychic exam to find out what was making her, Andora, beller all the time.

Well, in a flash, Vet Lisbeth Thurgood, glaring at me kind of keen eyed, says to me, “How long since this cow was milked?”

“Well” sez I, “how would I know? She ain't my cow or concern. I do not know when she was last milked but I can tell you she was not milked whilst she lay unconscious behind Buford’s Barbershop and Barbecue for the last three or four days” I knowed that because the only one that can milk her, due to her temperament is old Mrs. Anchell and she did not even come down to visit the Andora’s body while she was dead. Mrs. Anchell is too tender hearted to be looking at dead cows, especially her own.

Well, we must get her home to Mrs. Anchell. This cow wants milking and is in pain for lack of it. While we took Andora in tow and pulled her along towards Anchell’s place, Lisbeth Thurgood allowed to me that the golf ball-sized lead shot from the buffalo rifle had knocked Andora’s brain hard enough to knock the idea of going home out of the cow’s head and that, no doubt, was why Andora was hanging around the Catholic Church instead of going home like a cow ought to do. Course I have seen lots of cows, and pigs for that matter, not do what they ought to have done; lots of animals don’t do a durn thing that they ought to. If you doubt, that you just try to get a pig to share trough space.

Morgan David and Milking
Now, as a rule, I would not mention such personal things as this as I am never critical of others unless it is somebody else, but when we got to Mrs. Anchell’s her front door was locked. I went around to her kitchen door and it was locked and the blind was nearly all the way down. But, by peering carefully through the slit at the bottom of the shade, I could see accidentally, that old Mrs. Anchell had dozed off, apparently whilst meditating on a fairly large bottle of Morgan David. Which, as you can see, is how and why Lisbeth Thurgood, Veterinarian, and I put Andora in the barn and milked her. Well, when we commenced to milk Andora, she began to quit bellerin’ and a sort of tranquility began to creep back through the town.

We got three pails of milk and had to waste the rest, there being no pails about. We set the three pails on a bench and covered them with newspaper and went back to town. The Vet fee was eight dollars that I paid to Lisbeth Thurgood on the spot. I paid in cash money, on the belief that I would be reimbursed by old Mrs. Anchell. Though in the fullness of time I never got that eight dollars as it eventual became an unwilling donations, but that is another story.

The Miracle of the Butter
Well, you can see how things was going. About miracles and all. Old Mrs. Anchell slowly came to around about sunset and stirred herself up. She put the Morgan David for medicinal purposes away and made a cup of tea. As the sun was going down, she thought how she had usually gone to the barn to milk Andora and give her some feed around that time of day. With that on her mind she went out the back door and found, to her surprise, three pails of milk. Then she dashed to the barn and there, sure enough was the source of the milk, Andora, the saintly Catholic cow.

Even though Mrs. Anchell knew that Andora had come back from beyond the grave, she was still very excited to see her actually alive and standing in her accustomed stall. And Andora had obviously been milked by unseen hands. Mrs. Anchell put her old hands around Andora’s neck and said, lovingly, “It’s a miracle.”

Later that evening found Mrs. Anchell churning butter for she could not use that much milk. The creamy rich milk produced more butter than Mrs. Anchell had ever made. Looking at her new abundant supply, she thought to herself, “It’s a miracle.” If I had been there I could have mentioned that she had never before had three pails of milk for making butter, but I guess it is just as well that I was not there. Most people think I am too particular in my details no way; and I guess I am. I have heard people say I act just like a Virgo though I have never been sure of what that means unless it means I am very particular, which I am. I do like my laces to be squared up.

Capitalize the "S" in Saint
That night, when Mrs. Anchell went to bed she was reflecting on Andora and her miraculous recovery from being dead; on Andora’s dream messages that revealed the whereabouts of the will hidden in the bible; on the age old corn that had suddenly fallen from her little toe; and on the miracle of the butter, and so many other things that had happened since Andora had crossed over and returned from death. “It’s a miracle,” she thought, “and Andora is just a Saint.” The s was capitalized in saint when Mrs. Anchell thought about Andora.

That night she dreamed about Andora floating around heaven with a sparkling halo and playing a large harp. A troop of angels floated along with Andora and it all seemed very normal to Mrs. Anchell.

Anchell, Andora, and Bob Hope
The next day being Sunday and all, Mrs. Anchell was in deep reflection and reading her Bible and thinking about her saintly Andora. Then, all to oncet, it hit her that she getting to be a regularized church saint was not much different from nominating a high school queen; as she thought to herself it mainly a sponsor and donations. She had been that process once, many years ago, and knew that it just required getting world of the nomination around and getting some votes and maybe a sponsor or two.

Inspired by the simplicity of the matter, she resolved to have Andora elevated to a deserved sainthood and realized that all she really needed was the strong support of
Russian Orthopedic priest, Javier Obitem down at the old Catholic church. She knew she could get some public support for Andora and she would easily get Javier to write the Pope and sponsor Andora for a saint, more or less just like Bob Hope and other such saints.

She could hardly wait for the clock hands to tick on through Javier’s sermon time. His sermon was always followed by news comers coffee and donuts --- the truth was there wasn’t hardly any news comers, but the coffee and highly sugared donuts attracted regulars; the news comers coffee was always followed in the early afternoon by Sunday school. So she would wait for all these to play out before going down to the church; she did not want Priest Obitem distracted by anything when she approached him about nominating Andora for saint.

Andora Nominated for Saint
After Sunday School at the Russian Orthopedic Church, that most members of the community still referred to, by long and undisturbed habit, as the Catholic Church which, of course referred to the structure, not what went on therein, old Mrs. Anchell caught Javier totally unprepared.

She approached him, gently, with a twenty dollar bill for the tithe, and they chatted a few minutes, he remarking on the weather, her well being, and so forth. She then launching into Andora’s remarkable and Lazarus-like recovery from death; the miracle of the milk, the miracle of the butter, the miracle of the will, and so forth until Javier was quite overcome with her lengthy presentation.

Then, realizing the church needed several things which included repairing several of the beautiful stained glass windows in the old building, she mentioned to Russian Orthopedic priest, Javier Obitem, that if he persuaded the Pope to grant sainthood to Andora, she could be disposed to tax her meager assets to underwrite the repair of the windows…. a cherished objective of our hapless priest.

And, without refusing the matter out of hand, Javier said to her that he would consider it.

Mrs. Anchell gave Javier a jubilant hug, promised to send a detailed letter of the miracles now attributed to Andora, and went on her way as it was nearly Morgan David time.

Javier Reflects on His Credentials
Russian Orthopedic priest, Javier Obitem stood alone now in his sanctuary. Javier was reflecting on his chequered career. He was, as he knew, an undocumented wetback from Mexico with a penchant for religion and one who had been able to learn English easily as youth, now presenting himself, approximately as a Russia priest in charge of an orthodox church. He had just agreed to consider sainthood for a local cow and, as he clearly knew, it was not only impossible, especially with him as the agent, as neither he nor his church had any connection to the Pope, Rome, or Catholics. It depressed him greatly to be a party to the matter. But, then, of course, it was his duty to consider how best to protect the infrastructure of the old Catholic church building; it could not be allowed to become too shabby.

Anchell’s Letter Nominating Andora Wins Support
Our gentle readers will recall that Mrs. Anchell had been an honored third grade teacher and, with the help of her writing, and spelling, and a good Pink Pearl eraser she had helped rescue many of her adult students by filling our forms, writing letters, filling credit applications, and coaching not a few of them in the achievement of the precious GED. It was often said that she was “gooder than anybody at filling out forms, and applications, and such. Of course she had lots of practice at reading.

Bring her consideration skills to bear on what had now become an obsession, Andora’s sainthood, she quickly produced a nice three page letter which documented the entire death, recovery, and miracles attached to Andora.

Then she had the idea of having people attest to the facts and to urge Javier and the Pope to allow sainthood for Andora.

She immediately began to approach those who were involved and quickly attracted several winning signatories including Troy Baumgardner, honored WWI Vet who attested that he had shot Andora between the eyes with a slug that would cut down a telephone pole; eyewitness Herman Handers, local blacksmith, testified to examining dead Andora shortly after the shot that was fired had barely missed him; Buford, the owner of Buford's Barbecue and Barbershop, affirmed that Andora was shot and observed to be shot by a bevy of his customers and that Andora had lain dead for three days behind the barber shop. The personal evidence continued to pile up and was all supported in her neat handwriting by a good collection of the signatures of the solid citizens of the town.

Javier Obitem Accepts the Dreaded Letter
Mrs. Anchell drove over to the county seat and purchased one them nice clear view presentation binders with a professional black binding post because she wanted to include Andora’s photo as the cover and she did want a nice presentation for the Pope whom, of late, she had began to regard as a friend and neighbor.

The following day Mrs. Anchell called on the Priest Obitem at his little rectory, not forgetting to along a nice plate of iced sugar cookies --- a treasure highly regarded by one and all.

She had Javier down, as she would any student requiring a little coaching, and went through the whole binder, reaffirming each detail and all of the testimonial material so as to indelibly fix it in Javier’s mind. She felt if he would just feel as she did, that would make the presentation to the Pope so much easier.

Then, Javier offered her some tea, which she accepted. They had tea and a cookie. And then she drilled him again just to be sure that he understood his material.

After a painful two hours, Javier was relieved to see her out the door. After which he took the remaining cookies, about a dozen, and went to bed and slowly ate each cook while wondering what he was to do.

He began to wish he was once again among the guava trees of his youth in the uncomplicated village of La Primavera in old Mexico.

Time Creeps Past as Andora’s Sainthood Stalls
For the next month or so, Javier was seen less and less about town, having taken to his bed in an attempt to solve the Andora challenge. Mrs. Anchell, on the other hand, was out and about everywhere and totally eagle eyed for any chance encounter with Javier.

Javier was a simple man and had the unfortunate knack of not knowing how to say no. This inability drove him, regarding Andora, to finally compose a letter to an Archbishop that, by chance he knew, in a distant large city. He enclosed the bound report on Andora and continued to prefer his bed to being seen around town.

Lying in bed as a way of not encountering Mrs. Anchell was effective in the main for Javier but the idle time led him into reflection and, as we all know self examination is often an unpleasant experience that leads us to reflect on the many uncorrected sins and errors of our past.

Thus Priest Javier Obitem found himself engaged and realizing that he could have and really should have chosen to be a much better man than he had become.

These thoughts put him to thinking of his family, now mostly deceased, and all very far away. And thus, we now find him drawing an old suitcase from beneath his bed and there, in total disarray, are photos and memorabilia of his own equally disordered life.

An Old, Old Award Prompts a Solution
In the old tan with brown stripes suitcase, Javier finds a few photos of his childhood, pictures of a fiesta or two commemorating his name day, a few shots of his parents, some pictures of relatives he no longer remembered. Why, he asked himself, as we all do, did people take time to put date, place, and names, and occasions on these little treasures.

And there two, still in a stiff cardboard binding was a beautifully embossed gold and red letter with many fancy seals from the local Bishop of his youth, it was an award, a special award, for having attended a long series of summer Sunday training sessions and, as Javier recalled, only three people had attended all sessions and received these beautiful letters which, of course were executed in Spanish from the Bishop of La Venta. All that was long, long ago before Javier had devised to become a self appointed priest and launch his own not quite Catholic Church. And even that decision, in which he was resolved to only do good, had brought him to the cross road with the cow, Andora.

He had removed the very official award, the very colorful and gold embossed award from its card board cover and noting how beautifully it was executed, when he suddenly realized it was an official Catholic Church letter, addressed to him, and that being written in Spanish, there were few in the town who could have read the letter in any case.

He began to see that the letter might get him past his Andora problems and yet keep him in good stead with Mrs. Anchell.

And, he noted, Halloween was fast approaching. He began to see his way out.

The Greatest Halloween Ever
Javier began to see that the usual Halloween festivities might be pumped up a bit in order to help with his Andora problem. He was thinking that they could possibly use Halloween to help get his windows repaired, attain the desired status for Andora the cow, and keep Mrs. Anchell happy as well.

He therefore arranged a tea for the Halloween committee and urged them to ask the local merchants to help keep kids in and around downtown and their families by having the merchants give away free candy.

He also suggested that the old Church parking areas could be used as free vendor stalls for anyone who had something to sell like arts, crafts, or foods, or even garage sale type items.

And, he asked the committee to try to figure out how to snare a band or two from any of the little nearby communities. He also urged them to try to find ways to increase the usual number of contests like apple-dunking, potato-sack races, best costume, and so forth and even suggested that the church, with the advent of digital photography, might offer a free photo service for any who wanted their child’s Halloween costume photographed. He had not thought of the cost of color ink, photography grade paper, and similar things for he was, consumed with the flame of potential success.

Members of the lack luster Halloween committee who had never had an original thought began to glow with the prospect of having a really great Halloween and began to really join into the effort. Suddenly Halloween began to blossom and committee members were out raising candy, candy donations, and not a few went so far as to invite children from nearby towns to join the festivities.

A grand Halloween was about flower; and it would serve Javier very well.

The Pope Turns Mrs. Anchell and Andora down
Four days before Halloween, the excitement about the grand event was catching all over town. Here and there events were being planned for Halloween which ordinarily would have gone un-noticed. For instance, he Nursing Home and Office Secretarial Service decided to stage a small play for the nursing home; the Secretarial Service. The Pay Advance Loan Office was doing a window tableau and offering a drawing for a free five dollar bill. The Mayor’s office was making arrangements to offer hot spiced tea to selected citizens who might wander by… indeed; the festive air was filled with possibilities.

Prior to lunch, Mrs. Anchell received a hand delivered note from Javier Obitem asking her to tea at the rectory. As invitations to anything were rarer than Haley’s comet, she sent word that she would attend… and who would not?

At the appointed hour she arrived and was greeted by a solemn Javier Obitem. He served tea and the got straight to the issue. Drawing the old beautifully embossed gold and red letter with many fancy seals from the local Catholic Bishop of his youth, his attendance award, written in Spanish, from a leather case, Javier told Mrs. Anchell that he had word from the Pope about Andora. Then he read the text of the beautiful letter to her in which the Pope thanked her for bringing Andora to his attention and while she might be worthy of sainthood, the Pope begged to point out that it was well know that she was not Catholic but was well know to have been a long time member of the Baptist Fundamental Deviations Church prior to her recent conversion to the Javier’s Church. The Pope went on to suggest that Mrs. Anchell place her hopes for Andora before one of those two churches inasmuch as he, the Pope, could do nothing for a non-Catholic cow.

Obitem to Andora’s Rescue
Mrs. Anchell was clearly both thrilled and dismayed… having had the high honor of being written to by the Pope on one hand and then having her hopes dashed on the other.

She was quite befuddled and readily suggested Javier’s suggest that she retire to her large living room and have a little-pick-me-up in view of all the excitement.

Javier assured her he would take Andora’s case under consideration, personally, and see what could be done. What a shame, they agreed, that Andora had abandoned her original Catholic faith.

Mrs. Anchell retired in direction of her large bottle of Morgan David and its metallic cap; Javier opted for a rather strong single-malt. Javier was not a drinking man, but thought he had won the first stage of maneuvers and a little Scotch reward not undue.

Two Days Before Halloween
The town was fairly bubbling with Halloween activities. Children from distant parts were already showing up among the merchants demanding free candy even though the appointed day had not arrived (long afterwards it would be widely debated how it came that over a thousand children from nearby towns descended on Buford’s Crossing on Halloween to march up and down with local children seeking their annual sugary bribes; a question that only some of Javier Obitem’s committee members could have answered).

The Tuxedo and Tool Rental Shoppe, which also offered party and Halloween costume supplies was virtually sold out --- the owner noted they still had plenty of Frankenstein and Wolf Man and Nixon masks which he said children did not have an interest in as they preferred more modern characters about which he knew nothing at all, things like Wookies he could grasp but these white faced operatic characters exceeded his desire to know… still he sold lots of the usual knights, queens, princesses, mummies, and such.

Most of the stores had put some sort of display for the season and hay bales abounded along with Halloween motifs of a wide variety. The Mayor had ordered that the sixteen United States flags usually flown on Veteran’s Day be flown around the town the square and he had declared that citizens could either give away candy around the square or even offer home made goods, such as sweet dill pickles, for sale on Halloween night.

On that day, Javier dropped by Mrs. Anchell’s and asked to arrange for Andora to be present in the Church parking lot on Halloween and that Jerry Don Rivers, licensed bulldozer operator and GED graduate would, along with Lew Jorgen, former ROTC Army Captain and high school graduate, would safely escort Andora to the church. Mrs. Anchell was invited to attend a late Halloween tea with Javier and a few committee members in the rectory far from the swirling crowd.

Javier assured Mrs. Anchell that it would be a memorable occasion.

The Surging Crowd
Children do not wait for Halloween any more than they wait for Christmas. Early in the afternoon young children could be seen in every sort of costume, pulling on their parents fully stretched arms, as they towed the unwilling adults out in an early search for free candy and, of course, to be seen, which is second only to amassing a horde of corn syrup.

As sundown approached, the streets were fairly overflowing with hobgoblins, and not a few of them were young adults in search of sweet loot, and, as many merchants noted while watching their supplies of candy shrinking, many of the goblins were not locals. An enormous crowd of children and adults flowed back and forth between the square the various booths and activities offered at the churches. At Javier’s church there was a stand selling barbecued turkey legs; another offering an assortment of flavored ices which are a sort of sno-cone; one stand optimistically offered hand turned wooden pens; and various booths offered costume jewelry, homemade fudge and apple bobbing and a few such participant events and such. A fortune teller and a card reader finished out the group at Javier’s church.

In the midst of the booths at Javier’s church, Andora was in a stall of sorts, constructed of a few hay bales, and some posts which were connected by ropes and festooned with an abundance of ribbons. Andora, having found a bucket of turnips in her stall, was much occupied with eating turnips and ignored the passing crowds of witches and hobgoblins. Jerry Don Rivers, GED graduate and Lew Jorgen, former ROTC Army Captain, remained in attendance as a sort of honor escort.

The crowds grew and the little town found itself quite bursting with local and distant citizens while a spirit of abandon and merriment swept through the night air. Everyone, except Andora, was anticipating the fireworks which were to shot off at seven-thirty on the dot. In the rectory, Javier readied everyone to view the impending fireworks and privately told Mrs. Anchell to expect a surprise.

The Ascension of Andora and how she became Theodora
Around seven-fifteen PM, Priest Javier Obitem escorted his little group out to the parking area and assembled them around Andora’s stall to watch the fireworks.

The committee was present and several well known members of the local citizenry, including Buford, Troy of gun black powder rifle fame, and other notables, including me, and my rascally dog, Diogee, who took little note of any such affairs.

As the fireworks shot upward, tracing wonderfully bright colors on the dark sky, accompanied by a suitable number of booms and whistling sounds which subsided almost immediately due to the town’s budgetary restrictions. As some quietness fell, Javier told the assembled that he had an announcement regarding Andora,

He unrolled a scroll of some length, which he read at length and which, in part stated that “… whereas Javier, as the sole actionable principal of the Russian Church was duly empowered and did so act to declare Andora, the first and only animal saint associated with said Church, and further that Andora would officially known as Theodora, in memory of the great Empress Theophano whose devout life had been commemorated by her Byzantine Emperor husband, Leo VI, “the Wise”, who had not been allowed to dedicate a Church, built at his own expense, to his wife. Therefore, and hereafter Andora, shall be officially known as Theodora for merits already demonstrated…”

Javier handed the beautiful scroll to Mrs. Anchell, and the assembled dignitaries, much distracted by the swirling crowd of princes, princesses, and hobgoblins, began the business of escorting Theodora and Mrs. Anchell back to their barn and home.

And that is how Andora became a saint; and of course that is how, eventually, circumstances would lead to the question of whether the Church was obligated to support the efforts, of my dog, Diogee to run for Congress but, of course, that is another tale of another tail which, of course, must be continued. As a tale goes it is not much less strange than events which, years later, led to Andora being accused of the drwoning murder of an old goat with big curled horns... but that was long afterwards and, except for the wheelbarrow, would never have happened.

Dragon’s Breath Smoked Seasoning
For those hardy souls, who have no fear of spicy food, please be advised that there really is a Dragon’s Breath Smoked Seasoning and you really can buy and season food with it.
I especially love it on sausage, eggs, barbecue, steak, hamburgers, beans, and chili and, no doubt, many other foods which I have not yet tried. Dragon’s Breath is a hand processed, and individually smoked and prepared to order. If you are interested in trying a bottle, just drop me an email at media1@turnerteamagency.com and we’ll put you on the waiting list for the next batch. Dragon’s Breath is not a commercial item and is made only in small batches at ten dollars per ounce. Allow $3.95 for shipping.

Apologies
I do apologize to all persons, history, and any and all churches that may take offence, as I do, at my cow story.

On through the night

2009-09-19T02:53:00.000-07:00

Copyright, Terry D. Turner, 2009

A couple of people, including my own internal self talk mechanism, have said, "be glad when you get back to your old self." No one would be gladder than I to attain the general demeanor I exhibited before having to deal with this fast moving cancer about which I have written in previous posts. Certainly I am not claiming that my old curmudgeon character and manner could not be improved on, but it was a much more energetic and personable character than I now find myself to be.

In part it is stress that has altered me greatly. And, largely, it is the stress of the unknown. As you can easily imagine dealing with cancer of the lung, spine, ribs, etc. is no picnic under any conditions. Getting past the initial treatments is a tough job and, then following the initial treatment there is the on-going follow up treatments which require considerable discipline and an uncommon effort in terms of food preparation, and other disciplines, along with the ever present attempt to help the liver detoxify by use of un-roasted coffee enemas.

While this effort to be cancer free goes forward, there is no visible evidence that tells you if you making progress or losing ground. It is a matter of hoping you are gaining on the objective but having no way to judge how far you have come or how far you must go. Progress, or lack of it, against this type of cancer has to be judged with the huge and horribly expensive MRI/CT scanning procedures which can look in your body and see what happens you take a big dose of something akin to sugar water --- cancer does love sugar in all forms and the medical techs have learned know how to light up the cancer cells which hit their party time buttons when sugar becomes available. Then, of course, one does not want to be scanned too often so, during all the time between scan results are also times in which you must wonder what is going on inside your body.

And naturally, you do not forget that this cancer blindsided you once and only a fool would rest easy with such a sneaky opponent.

With all markers and indications absent, all the follow on treatments, protocols, and and all that goes into the battle to be cancer free must go forward, so to speak, in darkness... hoping against hope that the protocols are working and that cancer is receding or even dead.

Under ordinary circumstances we have our health issues so well defined that we think we know where things end and begin... take this for ten days and be well; rub this on and it will stop. We'll just cut this off and that will be that. Take this for headache and it will cease and so forth. If you have the flu your own dripless nose tells you it is over.

Not so with cancer. Rising with cramps in the middle of the night, or, as I am now, sitting here drenched with yet another night sweat which forces me off my wet pillow and out of my wet sheets to change into fresh underwear, you don't know how you are doing.

What you do know is that you are exhausted with taking a hundred or two hundred pills a day. You know you are weary of these drops and those drops in thirty-two ounces of water; you are water logged with don't forget your food grade hydrogen peroxide (only eight drops in five ounces of water and only four times a day) and don't forget your lead free bicarbonate of soda and, by the way don't forget to think how to mitigate the extra salt; and don't forget your dose of molasses and bicarbonate of soda, and on and on. But all of this, of necessity, proceeds because it must...these are one's tools in a silent battle with a silent opponent. It rather reminds me of a famous line whose origin I have long since forgotten "Just because I am paranoid, don't mean nobody ain't following me."

So, with the battle fully underway between yourself and the cancer, what you do have the is recurring exhaustion that comes with every little pain which says, "Hey! What am I? Could I be cancer spreading?" Of course there is no reason to think so, but this aggravation is another burden on the attempt to have a tranquil mind

The sweats and the cramps, which just don't seem to end even though now and then I get a break from one or both, but they keep coming back. Are the sweats a good thing, like detoxification? No one seems to absolutely sure but they remain a constant companion during the battle.

And there is the tiredness of the aftermath of all the treatments. It is a flat, tired energy-less zone in which you remain too tired to rest, too tired to talk; too tired to do much of anything; it is a tiredness that reminds of that mournful haunting poem, Ozymandias.

Ozymandias
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said--"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert ...Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Ah, but tired or not, we must go on with enthusiasm, and on, through the darkness and on to the dawn when at last we will see proof of our labors; the cancer markers will fade, and the CT will look in vain for the sugared cells, and the nightmare will fade. And in time, the cancer will be forgotten, new treatments will arise, and in due course the forty year old popular health destroying death treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, in the main, will be replaced with the alternative life supporting treatments such as hydrogen peroxide, bicarbonate of soda, zeolites, oxygen, and such. And I will be left with the memory of the many, many friends and family who came to my aid in this battle.

God Bless You and Yours in All Things,

Terry
The Constant Curmudgeon

How Annie Turner Became a Heroine

2009-09-05T05:05:00.000-07:00

Charlie Whitsitt and Combine

In the fall of 1945 or 1946, as nearly as I recall I had an NDE ( a near death experience). For me it was death, period. It was an event that left an erasure in my memory and, I think, probably changed my mental and physical structure for all time. By erasure, I mean that I had a life and conscious memory one second, then for a time, who knows how long, I think a day or two, I did not exist, no memories, no feelings, no thoughts, no time, and nothing attaches to that long blank space that was removed from my life.

I do apologize to my readers for yet another improbable story, but I did not choose this nor many other events in my life. In this particular story I am simply the victim and my dear grandmother, Annie Turner, is the absolute heroine of the story --- which is the tale of how I became the Electrified Dancer.

This electric event occurred in the same year in which I was burned in the ditch, and later shot myself with a 22 cartridge. It was an eventful year.

This is yet another memory I am working to replace with pleasant and happy thoughts and, at my age, none too soon.

So this is how I came to be dangling from a radio antenna wrapped around a fifty thousand KV electric transmission line which ran the length of East Second Street in Wichita Falls and went beyond the horizon in both directions. I should say I have no way of knowing anything about the transmission line and that I rely on what I was told after the event (about which I know nothing).

In the spring of the year, a friend was moving from Texas to California. I don't recall his name but I do remember his mother was very tolerant of children and we seem to have a lot of fun racing around her dining table singing some nonsense about "Mabel, Mabel, set the table, and don't forget the red hot sauce" or something similar to that.

Just when they were prepared to drive away for the last time in the late afternoon, a storm was brewing and giant clouds were darkening the skies. My friend dashed from the car to my house and told me that he had left a softball for me under the edge of his house with some other things and he urged me to go gather up the loot before the storm. At that instance a giant bolt of lightening split the sky and fairly shook the ground, the rain started in torrents and he dashed off for the waiting car and I dashed into the house, heeding my Grandmother's voice telling me to get indoors.

The storm raged a long time and everything flooded while high winds dashed down tree limbs willy nilly... a very typical Texas storm. You can imagine that I was not allowed out of the house and due to the winds and lightening was happy to stay near my Grandmother due to the fearsome storm.

The next day dawned bright and clear and I was anxious to have my breakfast and get up to my friend's house to see my new treasure trove, little suspecting that fate was waiting for me.

Annie Turner served me, as almost always, some hot biscuits, gravy, and an egg. She cooked at all hours, sometimes nine meals a day, because her husband, Joe worked strange hours for the railroad as a Fireman on the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad as did her son, William L. "Buddy" Turner who was a brakeman on the same line. Their hours meant we might have hot meals at any hour of the day and night and, Dad, her husband, Joe, liked me to dine with him. Mother, as many women of her day, did not believe a meal could be served without hot bread; the consequence was that I had a huge caloric intake and was a rather giant child.

After breakfast I went dashing over the damp ground, skipping pools of water, shortcutting to the nearby house. I think it was only one or two houses removed from our home, though I don't actually recall the layout of our little neighborhood. I think there was a small Pentecostal Church between our houses.

As I went dashing towards the assigned spot, I did not notice a very long wire dangling before me, so intent was I on the prize. The wire was a long section of radio antennae that had blown loose from a distant tree and managed to get draped over a power line and dangled there, near the edge of the house, a trap for anyone who strayed into contact.

In that era most homes had a wire radio antenna which either ran the length of the eve of the roof of the house or was run along the house and attached to a distant tree or pole. More ambitious people seeking better, wider reception might run these wires a considerable distance tying the wire to trees or anything to gain height and distance. Those of you so young that you do not about the vagaries of trying to tune in a broadcast have no idea how primitive communications of the era were.

At any rate the electrified wire awaited me and I slammed directly into it; my world and mind ceased to exist. I cannot describe the event because for all practical purposes I was dead at that instant with no feeling, memory, or any other sensation.

Apparently I could involuntarily vocalize because my cries attracted a small crowd of neighbors who could not muster the courage to deal with the situation and watched whilst I twisted and turned in my electrified dance.

Somehow Annie Turner, a small woman, became aware of this situation and came on a dead run to my aid. I am told that as she approached me, she knew that the only chance for her or me was to strike me with great force and to carry both of us beyond the wire.

So, mimicking football players, running at full speed she threw a commendable body block at me, and with the momentum of her speed and weight, she carried both of us to safety beyond the wire. 911 was years in the future and, in any case, would have been far too late.

I do not recall that or several days afterwards until I became more conscious of the fact that something horrible had happened and that I had lost toenails, fingernails, and that my mind didn't seem to be the same familiar turf. I could tell you about the pain and confusion but I am sure you can imagine all that... no fun for sure. I cannot say how long I was "out" nor can I say if received any sort of medical treatment, though I think we did employ doctors at the time unless a serious emergency developed.... that idea may amuse some of you as the present custom leans toward seeing a doctor at once for most conditions.

Thereafter, and to this day, I cannot pick up a piece of wire without clearly see both ends and I do not care to work with electricity in any fashion.

I think it changed my "perception" of the world and perhaps made me "see" things differently in the visual sense. One side effect, I think, is that I seem to have a strange effect on electronics, especially my own computer, and sometimes on electrical equipment belonging to others.

I was recently in a doctor's office where he proposed to use some sort of electronic bio magnetic device on me but he had great difficultly launching his machine and calibrating it for the purpose intended. I knew what was happening to his device, at least I believe I knew, but, of course, I said nothing as this invariably leads to a long and complex discussion ending in disbelief or it does not lead to a conversation and ends in disbelief. This is one of those stories like the buffalo attack, which is best left untold.

At any rate, Annie Turner saved my life. No doubt about it. She did so when no one would lift a hand to help me. Thanks, Mom, thanks for all the next sixty plus years.

Addendum, due to questions generated by this story, I add these comments about Annie Turner. She had three children, Dorothy, Ollie, and Buddy. At the time of this event the daughters were married and busy with thier own lives. At the time her husband, Joe William Turner, was alive and her son, William Laverne "Buddy" Turner, were both living at home with her. They were both railroad men, were often away, and Annie was armed with a small 32 pistol which she carried about in her apron. She did not hesitate to brandish it if she did not like the look of someone about the neighborhood. A very small woman, born in 1900, she was indefatigable, never hesitated tackling jobs that were thought the province of men, such as fence building, plowing, digging ditches, or doing plumbing work, or slaughering livestock, and I observed that she almost immune to ordinary pain. I once saw her take a fall which drove a broken old style glass Coca-Cola bottle deep into the bone of her arm. She pried it out with a screwdriver, wrapped in dish cloth and went about her business.

Photo Credit. Source and date unknown, the picture has a note that says Charlie Whitsitt, Annie's father, and Combine. I am guessing it is around 1890-1900. Annie Turner was born in 1900. I put the Whitsitt Wagon here as a place holder as, oddly, I could not find a single picture of Annie Turner. In due course, I will get her photo on this article.

See The Amazing Burning Boy Dance, Just 25 Cents

2009-08-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

See The Amazing Burning Boy Dance, Just 25 Cents
or Things I Release Forever -- The shining suit case handle

Copyright, Terry Turner, 2009

Of late I have been writing mainly about dealing with deadly cancer and, of course, you can't deal with cancer without looking at other issues.

All serious integrative medicine knows, absolutely, that we store emotional and physical damage in our bodies, and this stored negative energy is very adverse to human health. At another time I will list resources in regard to this "storage" but in the short term, take a look at folks like Marty Kleva http://gemfireair.com/aboutme.html --- the book Soul Dancing and a great deal of invaluable material on her website; or Cindy and Dr. Bob Deering of http://www.spiritemergenceoftaos.com/ --- free consultations available, or people in the tradition of Dr. Hamer of Germany.

At this time, I am simply going to address a terrifying memory which I would love to totally release and replace entirely with good and happy thoughts.

Around 1945 or so, I would have about six years, old. In the late fall of the year I had an event which cost me pain for months then and probably for all the years since.

At that time of year, it was common for property owners to clear away dead plants, trash, and debris of every sort. In the neighborhood where I lived there were gigantic honey suckle and other bushes of enormous size on most the properties.

When the wintry blasts had killed the green leaves, turning them to a sort of toasty colorful brown and red, all such plants were cut back and piled in ditches...what we called bar ditches at the time. These ditches ran along side our oiled roads and drained off water from rains. The ditches tended to be rather deep, I am guessing on average maybe about three or four feet deep.

When all the debris had been cleared from the property, which invariably included a goodly amount of trash which might contain anything, it was piled in the ditch between the property and the road and burned. Burning such trash was totally uncontrolled at that time.

Depending on wind, the amount of trash, the amount of plant material, and such factors, these fires might burn for half a day or a day or two and, over time, the top of the debris would develop a thick ashen gray coat which looked cool, and was material that had been totally burned away, but that gray blanket covered a small ocean of red hot embers that smoldered on..... white hot, red fire banked, volcanic like, beneath its warm gray blanket.

On this particular, day, as a young tow headed kid, I was walking along the road, I think returning from my first grade classes and suddenly, from the corner of my eye I saw something bright and very shinny --- clearly it was some wonderful thing. Do recall, please, that this is early on in WWII --- there were few bright and shinning things for kids --- and it was a khaki and olive green world for most people at the time, not black and white, not color. At the time things like our little tiny toy trucks were mainly rubber and colored with lead paint; dolls were still often bisque or relatively high grade well finished plastic, but they did not shine and sparkle as now do all things in our so called modern world.

Standing on the edge of that deep bar ditch I could feel some heat, and in Texas, even in September it is hot anyway.... we try to ignore heat to the extent possible. I could feel heat wafting off the gray ash; I could see the bright handle gleaming in the afternoon soon.

And, of what use was that bright handle to a young kid? Are you kidding me? In that day all kids existed on imagination ... we did have movies, CDS, videos, electronic toys, we just imagined things. You could pretend that handle was pistol just like Tom Mix's own six shooter. Ha! with anything that bright it could even be one of those spark throwing Flash Gordon rocket and space type guns. You could clean it and carry it around in your little stripped overalls and show it to other kids.... and they would all wish they hand one, so rare were really bright things. There was no end of uses, like digging holes, and pretending that it would unlock doors and who knows what and it would be my very own little treasure. And it was free!

The deep gray ash extended down the ditch about 100 feet it each direction.

So I resolved to have it. I would just jump in the ditch, seize the suitcase handle, and jump out.

Little did I know I was about to enter an endless molten hell.

I gave a little jump towards the middle of the bar ditch, and as my feet sank through the top of the ash, the ash flew skyward, a huge quantify of ash propelled by my weight and the rising heat instantly towered over me, I was sucking the ash into my lungs, I had to close my eyes, and following the ash the red hot embers shot skyward as I sank deeper and deeper into the burning inferno.

I knew I was in bad trouble and I knew I had to get out some way, even though I was now effectively on fire, my clothes and flesh were burning and I was blind for practical purposes and, then, I made yet another bad decision, I got a glimpse of the length of the ditch and began to run towards the distant end where the fire terminated.

I must have looked like a little motor boat racing down a channel of water and throwing up a rooster tail of ash and fiery red embers. How fast can you run while being cooked alive? Fast friends, fast.

Coming out the end of the bar ditch, which left a long string of fire, smoke, embers, and hell behind, me all I could think was to run to my grandmother, the woman who raised me, Annie Turner. My pants were burned off almost to my knees, my little shoes were bubbling away on my feat, embers were smoldering all over me, in my hair, on my clothes and anywhere a hot coal could lodge a holding.

I do not recall much of the run for home. Most of when I then remember is that Mom and some neighbor grabbed and dosed me from a rain barrel and then in quick order swept everything off the kitchen table. Mom first doused me with kerosene from top to bottom --- kerosene was the useful alternative treatment for everything in that era. I suppose it is too refined today to be of use for anything on a medicinal level. Once she had me soaked in kerosene, she cut off my shoes and clothes and did what ever mothers can do to calm me... in the meantime, reaching into her flour bin (the 25# of flour kind that was under every kitchen counter of the era) she steady added huge quantities of flour, water, and some buttermilk to a huge bread bowl, and once the paste was acceptable to her, she began to slather the paste onto me so that no air could reach my body... this went on, to me, forever, the cooling paste helped soothe the fire.

I however remained in excruciating pain which went on for days. I don't really recall much about it. Mom worked on me day and night, especially on my feet which took the worst of it. I am sure weeks were involved and I am quite sure Mom never left me, steady replacing the paste, steadily watering me down with kerosene, steadily applying butter to really bad places, steadily using little bits of block ice here and there.

Eventually, I was well enough to crawl around on my knees, so long as I manged to keep my feet in the air... again this went on a long time. Weeks I suppose.

Eventually, I got well, got to wear shoes, and began to feel normal except that a great deal of trust had been removed my life, a great deal of fear had been installed.

Another kid got the shining handle.

This event, even at 70 years of age plagues me now and then. As do many other events in my life. All of us have such traumas some more or less dramatic but all deep, scarring, and painful.

My present solution is this. I am going to open a home in my 70 year old heart for that young tow headed kid. I am going in deep meditation back to that burning hell and I am going to rescue young Terry Don before he leaps into that ditch and I am bringing him back to live forever, safely with me. We can be pals. Maybe we will get catcher's mitt and find someone to play ball with but we are going to forget, forgive, and forever release the burning bar ditch on East Second Street in Wichita Falls, Texas.

Traumas are out there. Not far into the future I would find myself at death's door electrocuted by a radio antenna hanging over a 50,000 KV electric transmission line; and far off in the future lay a buffalo attack, and many other events to address. But, today, I am going to bring Terry Don from the past to the future.

Photo: Annie and Joe Turner seated, 1941, Joe holding Terry Don about age 2; I was gigantic, and, standing in the background, my brother/uncle, William Laverne Turner, "Buddy."

Path of the Flower Child

2009-08-22T01:59:00.001-07:00

Being a flower child was really easy until, say, around age 65.

Then, somehow, it began to get inexplicably harder.

Critical? Who? Me?

2009-08-22T01:52:00.000-07:00

I have never been critical, ever,

unless it was of someone else.

A Slice of the Real Anti Cancer World

2009-08-21T18:39:00.001-07:00

Thursday was my last radiation day for which I am grateful, but that or something left me feeling sort of deflated. Never the less, several of you have asked what am I doing out here in terms of recovering my health and defeating my cancer which, as mentioned, when discovered was eating my spine, eating into my my spinal column, attacking my spinal cord, my ribs, and working away to digest my left lung.... a nasty silent aggressor.

One person said, I suppose you stroll up and down the beach a lot. Ha! Stroll? Those us who arrive in this part of the West are sitting on the edge of our graves. We have been, almost without exception, given an emotionless death sentence by members of an oncology team who seem totally bereft of feelings other than trying to figure out how to scare you into killing yourself by committing to about $200,000 worth of chemotherapy and, maybe some fun options like having lots of your body cut up and, maybe some radiation as well too burn you until you can't swallow, digest, or take a dump.

You may recall they told me I was a Hail Mary Miracle Case in the beginning --- small cancer, easy to deal with, then suddenly I was rather drastic and needed urgent chemo, and then, in quick order I only had a two percent chance of survival, even with chemo, and when Susan and I kicked back and said we would seek a second opinion and take a look at what we believed, in our hearts, to be true, that chemo and radiation and surgery produce dead survivors and that cleansing, nutrition, clean food, immune support and logical, safe, minimally damaging treatments produces not survivors but people who have recovered from cancer. Of course, Susan and I have been advocates for clean food, nearly impossible to get in America these days, and good nutrition most of our lives.

"Mr. Jolly," as I shall call my happy oncologist, called us the next day and said we could not start chemo fast enough, that it was too late for me in any case, and then he added, you will be paralyzed in a matter of days, your spine is already too week for you travel. Suzi was busy booking the flight and notes and other powerful encouragements were arriving daily from family and friends around the world. I am so happy that I can say that I had not one nay-sayer to deal with (other than Mr. Jolly) and in essence everyone supported our decision to head west for the best center of integrative and alternative and traditional care that could be found under one roof -- that roof belongs, of course, the Issels Medical Center.

So, when we get here, we are not strolling, most of us are glancing downward into the pit that is clearly the grave that modern diet and modern medicine have digging for us for years.... it catches up with some of us sooner than others. Exhausted and hardly able to walk, rise, sit, stand upon arrival here, a caring staff has its hands full to deal with us ... believe me, upon arrival, trying to grasp how quickly your life has been splintered, fearful of the darkness towards the bottom of the grave, mentally exhausted, ordinarily due long term pain (almost 15 weeks in my case before I had any relief), your emotions are slowly becoming a sea of fear, mush, and tears which, somehow, you must manage to marshall into a positive we can do this and win attitude. So, again no, we do not stroll the beach. The few of us with the strength to do so do, of course. I tried to make it to the beach but simply did not have the strength to stand nor the stamina to walk that far. I do thank God that I can daily hear and see the ocean from our little apartment.

So, what happens out west and what do we really do here. I will give you the best picture I can but every day is unique to the day, the patient, and the cancer, and the odd things that attend the day. For example, one day I was scheduled to go into Far Infrared Therapy but I came out of one treatment and for unknown reasons began to cramp and had to do some quick marching up and down the hall to try to relive the cramps ... and this, in turn affected the rest of my schedule for that day.

In the beginning intense medical history and test results are assembled form wherever such things can be had.. collected by FEDEX, Email, fax, etc. so that the doctors can assemble the best profile of you and your problem as possible and, of course, all the usual things such as weights, pressures, oxygen content, supplements taken, medicines taken, prior and other medical problems and histories and so forth. As I am 70, and having had a rather eventful life I have to be careful to remember every thing and just drafting this reminded me that I failed to report that I had a voluntary vasectomy in 1963. I must let the staff know tomorrow.

As this material begins to mature into one's database, the various treatments, tailor made for each case, each person, and each day begin to be launched. There are no days on which all the same things happen day after day but, on most days, something like this will be the drill.

Susan and I arise about 5 Am, I joke that I do so to work on my original Issels Opera, "Have you had your coffee enema today? It's one thing that will help keep cancer away." I brew the un-roasted special coffee for my approximately cup and a half enema. It is hard to make enemas a pleasant topic and many of us, for a time, take the coffee enema morning and night.... twice the coffee, twice the fun.

We do some quick housekeeping, Susan is busy trying to figure out how to do a live organic type breakfast for me (not the huge portions of scrambled eggs with lots of cheese that I like) and invariably she wants to peel a large cucumber.... I like cucumber, of course, but some days, looking at the pale cucumber, I do realize it is not a good hot steaming biscuit of the type I am fond of making.

Between food preparation, enemas, showering, dressing, and all that goes with that, we have to begin to sort and assemble the supplements for the day.... these numbers vary, of course, from case to case, and time to time depending on the patient, the cancer, and the medical stats. In my case I start with three saucers. I put the morning, noon, and evening dose, individually, in each saucer. When each saucer has its allotment of pills, I leave the pills on the morning saucer as I must take them immediately after our breakfast.... not my beloved hot biscuit, gravy, or such of long ago and far away. The pills in the other two saucers I transfer to plastic bags for later use.

At this time, day in and day, I am prescribed one powdered drink called Wholly Immune. I am prescribed about 90 drops of three liquids in a quart of water (the Heel Detox Kit), and I take, ore or less about fifty assorted pills each day before any additional pills given me at the clinic.

The price of some supplements are rather breathtaking, though I am not complaining. One item called Salvestrol Platinum, 75 caps, costs about $195 per bottle....such is the nature of the battle.

Then we have to try to handle some of our emails, do things to try to keep our little interests going, and get showered and ready to move out by taxi or hitched ride to the clinic around 7:30 AM --- arising at 5 barely gives us time to do this, though I do admit to having a little fresh coffee before we launch fully into the day.

Arriving at he clinic, all our daily stats are gathered (weight, pressure, oxygen, etc.) and then we all begin to move off to our various treatments. Wednesday, as I recall, I had far-infrared therapy first in which the name of the game is weakened cancer cells with heat. Cancer does not like heat and so we strive to heat our bodies to around 105-106 degrees and hold that temperature to kill the cancer cells. There are two methods, one is dry heat, and one is in a closed chamber which will pull the sweat off your body in copious amounts and, in that case, you are trying to drink all the water you can.

Then you might move on into a hyperbaric chamber (an oxygen box) in which you are sealing in a large plastic chamber, rather shaped like a giant hot dog, and you breathe oxygen... it gets hot in the chamber and I usually ask for a block of ice.... as the pressure rises your ears pop, airplane style, and the heat goes up; the ice helps me keep cool and distracts me.

Probably then you might move on to, for example the IV room, where they punch the needles and ports into your arms that must be opened to become the highways for the various specialty IVs. Some IVs --- an IV is a bag of nutritional fluid or meds which is conveyed into your body via the needles --- are what I call shorties, maybe they only last an hour, some are dreadfully big and, like the type which are mainly large vitamin C dose type, nay last three to four hours. These long bags are bothersome in that you need to remain seated for long periods of time and they certainly interfere with bath room time.

With all this going on someone always has a little cup of this or a drink or that or another pill to be taken while the IV continues.

Somehow, with all this there are conferences to be held with the doctors, there are grief counseling sessions with Dr. Walter Lewis, a man for whom I have the greatest respect, and so on. Having the chance to personally talk with Dr. Issels, or Dr. Walter Kim, or Dr. Lewis is always a high point.

Then, thanks to a caring and determined staff somehow you will get more and other treatments worked in. Off to reflexology, quick let's get to acupuncture, or lymphatic massage. Let's keep moving, let's get some new blood draws ... just six or seven new tests today, and in between these wonderful nurses are seeing that you get down a ton of water, that you don't fall on your head, that you don't pull over your IV tower, that you get your green drinks, your green salad, and your green lunch.

Whirling around in the back ground are some great informational lectures, too bad the whole world cannot hear these which explain how our dead farms are providing us with dead food that is killing us, how faulty lab tests can be, how erroneous diagnosis can be, and so forth.

And, of course, there are some classes such as what types of ingredients to avoid, or how to select food, or how to prepare food (for many people the idea of preparing food is almost as alien to them as cancer, but prepare food you must if you are going to live. And, of course one must relearn how to think about food, how to select food, and how to eat food. Here is a clue for you. Eat more than half your food as raw uncooked veggies to take a great step towards avoiding cancer. Suzi and I feel that though we ate raw food, we did not eat enough in our rush to attend to business. I can assure you, in our present and future lives, nothing will replace the need to first and foremost take care of our personal health issues.

Towards the end of the day, the fat IV bags grow flat, at last, and as we make preparations to wrap up the day, it is not uncommon to get an immune boosting shot, made from you own blood, on the spot, to help launch your immune defenses to keep them fully stirred up and active against cancer.

This "schedule" of course is only approximation of our daily schedule but I think it will give you a picture of sorts. At the end of our day, around 5:00 PM, for two weeks, Suzi and I then had to gather up our books, my supplements, meds, and liquids and go to the Cottage Hospital where I would then take the daily radiation treatment which I had to have due to the advanced attack cancer made on my spine. By the time we process through the radiation treatment and return to our apartment, the clock is advancing on 7:30 PM, and it is time for us to figure out an organic meal, suitable to my program, and do all the nightly things that require attention before the 5:00 AM alarm calls us away.

The folks there were fabulous, kind, caring but and do note this, they seemed somehow disconnected on one level because they offered cookies at the entrance and candies throughout the facility to the public, clients, visitors and so forth.

Regarding all the candy and sugar, I so wanted to say, "Hey! Folks, don't you know cancer is trying to kill us and you are feeding cancer free sugars, its favorite food?" I did not tackle that with the administration. I was just too tired to go to battle, but, dear family, dear friends, don't just assume that what you see, what you hear, what you are offered is sensible. Anyone can see that offering sugar to a cancer victim is an actual crime. This of course raises the question as to whether people in the healing professions should engage in concerns about social amenities like cookies or should they do all that they can to educate their patients.

As I patient, I would prefer to be reminded to avoid sugars at all costs.

Addendum, my first radiation treatment was in August 2009, in Santa Barbara, California; by November I was again having radiation in Mt. Pleasant Texas at the Bo Pilgrim Oncology Center... Bo Pilgrim is the well known chicken king in a Pilgrim style hat.

Your Constant Curmudgeon,

Terry Turner

Image Credit; to the best of my knowledge the image is part of a small photocopy of a painting which was possible done by an American Indian person by the name of Ron Twelve. The copy was then glued on a Russian style three piece triptych and, to me, remains incredibly charming. The original title of the piece may have been Indian Easter. I regret that is all that I can offer in the way of information.

Gold Coin, Golden Friends

2009-08-20T20:46:00.001-07:00

When I think about the people across my life who have helped me, I shall be resolved to recall all of them and record the varied and many ways in which they helped me.

There are people who have helped so much, so often, and over such a long period of time that it would require Gone with the Wind volumes to try to thank them.

Today, I am thinking about various to aid or not aid decisions I made and whether I did the right thing. It is often hard to know if you were right or wrong or whether something was in your own best interest or, for example, in the best interest of the person you were trying to help.

Around 1982, Susan and I were hard pressed financially as a result of a severe strain on our resources which involved trying to keep a Colorado gold mine afloat. During that time a young mother with two relatively small children, a friend and business acquaintance of mine, called on us in our offices and explained that she was basically homeless, jobless, and had no way of feeding her children. Her name was Hope and I do recall what a tremendous optimist she was and had always been. Susan and I were nearly in the same condition as she at that time, but we did have around $1200 in cash.

What to do? What to do? We elected to give her our remaining cash and hope for the best ... while we did not regret the decision then or now, it led in an infinite number of problems for us because we became the sourceless ones. Perhaps we should have advanced her less and kept more... who can know?

Some four or five years later, Suzi and I found ourselves in a situation in which we could not manage to pay our own rent for, I suppose, the first time in our lives. It was an alarming situation which we had tried to resolve by reducing our rates for typesetting to nearly zero but there was just no income to be had... the personal computer had arrived and typography was dying like the very last leaves before a December storm.

At that time we had the custom, one of our "luxuries," of having a home cooked meal on Thursday evening with an old friend. We enjoyed the cooking and the fellowship, and the chance to think of anything except business and money. In those days, we will still in the burger era and often enjoyed huge burgers and sometimes with rice and huge bowls of gravy ... our appetites were hearty and the thought of a "healthy diet" did not interest or repress us. Our conversations usually ran the gamut of everything from the effect of retrograde planets to the reflective questions that surrounded meditation or even structured water and vibrational theories of one sort or another.

Our guest was always Greg, an old friend of many years who probably knows more about my life than any man alive. As we made our way through dinner it was quiet clear that finances would not be kept from the dining table. As Greg came to understand our plight, I have no doubt that he had reservations about what he could or should do. He had a wife, he had obligations, and he knew whatever he advanced us would, at the time, be far beyond our ability to repay.

Whatever his own thoughts may have been, however great my humiliation may have felt, when
Greg took his leave for the evening, a bright gold coin lay on the dining table between Susan and I.

If you have never been in similar circumstances, you cannot imagine how big such a coin looks, you cannot image how it seems to flash and glow as from an inner fire, you cannot imagine how heavy, how solid, how reliable, how substantial it seems to be. There lay our immediate rescue, a bright golden circle of power holding our landlord at bay.

The next day we had to cash it in for paper money.... gosh, how we wished we could have kept the coin as opposed to trading it for paper, but we had to have the cash that would pay our rent and still buy a bit of food and gasoline, and the precious time to get ourselves reorganized and moving in a viable direction.

Years would go by, businesses would come and go, until finally, one fine day, Suzi and I were able to drive up to Montrose, Colorado and purchase a fine golden coin to return to Greg and his beautiful Catherine. It went to him by mail from Colorado to Texas. We did not send interest nor, I am sure did he expect it, but at least the coin made its full circle. I have not seen Greg in years but across time and space we are yet good and strong friends and, believe me, time will never diminish the importance of that particular gold coin in our lives.

How often do we find ourselves calling for help or being able to offer help in a lifetime? More often than most of us would think. And, how many people, friends, do you suppose desperately need help and cannot find the voice to ask for that same help? There are many.

I am now headed toward my 71st birthday and, recently. due to an unsuspected cancer attack which nearly cost me my life, I found my self liquidating whatever assets I could put a hand to, and quickly leaving Texas oncology behind to seek the alternative treatment in California that I hope and believe will save my life and spare my spine, already invaded by my silent attacker.

As I write you, I am midstream in my battle to overcome this cancer, feeling fully humbled, actually feeling embarrassed and humiliated to once again be dependent on donors, gifts, and loans of every stripe.

Thanks to God for my many benefactors among family, friends, and even people that I do not know, who have come to my aid, whether with cash products, transportation, or other resources which allow me to continue purchasing the great services of the Issels Medical Center in Santa Barbara, California.

In this little tale, I mention Greg. I could mention others of heroic dimension, such as Marty, Caroline, Ann, Sandy, Ron, Wilbur, Kim, Brod, Mickie, Mark, Sizemore, Joan, Edna, Todd, Lou, Linda, and others, many, many others.

One of those whose name I have not sung for a long time was my deceased uncle William Laverne Turner. In World War II, a mysterious time for young children, a time when events left children feeling lost and at odds with things, I recall that Buddy, as we called him, was about to ship off to Egypt. I remember how "formal" he looked in starched golden khakis and I recall that he picked me before boarding a local West Texas bus and said a few words to me, and when he put down, he reached in his pocket and put a big silver dollar in my hand. "Terry Don," he said, "it is fine thing to have a little money in your pocket." Then he was gone, disappearing in the rumble and dust of the departing bus, to save the very America that is today being destroyed.

Many years later his sister, Dorothy, would hand me a Pick Wick grocery bag of shirts for my school year... they were rather shimmery and very colorful, I think they Hawaiian shirts and, as she was hard pressed to support her own children, I do not know how she manged to get the shirts for me.

The shirts were used, of course, but how colorful, shinny, and new they seemed to me. Long years later her sister, my aunt, Ollie Irene, would reach into her meager resources to keep me in freshly laundered and starched white shirts in order to help me in my quest to find work.

This story, as I write it, gives me an odd feeling... I sound like a person who never made pay day yet, looking back over the decades, I was a hard working successful executive. After my military service, I quickly became the most often promoted employee among junior executives at Southwestern Bell Telephone and served as staff trouble shooter for some time; from there I moved on become Business Manger, Materials Manger, and Industrial Engineer of Cessna Aircraft, then in short order I became the International Materials Manger, Purchasing Manger, and Senior Project Engineer of Whitaker Cable... all Fortune 500 companies, before I dropped from corporate business and became an entrepreneur involved in oil, mining, magazine and newspaper publishing and a wide array of other ventures. Even so, today, as you see, I am quite reduced in my prospects at the moment (please don't think I am "finished," I am simply regrouping for another attack).

Ah friend, if you could feel the white hot tears that rush down my cheeks now, propelled by feelings of gratitude, shame, humility, humbleness, and pain --- emotions that are simply excruciating as I wonder whether I thanked them well and good; and, of course, I must ask myself if I could have done more for them on other occasions. I am reminded of email I often get from a lady by the name of Sharon which, invariably, exhorts one and all to "Be kinder than necessary for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle."

If you can't pay it back, maybe you can pay it forward. If you can't pay in kind maybe you can pay in other ways but, in any case, in these and such things we can at least build a little of the fraternity and fellowship that we so desperately need in this world. I think also, that we need to always remember that for some much is little, for some a little is a great deal. I have a sister who devotes virtually all of her resources to animal rescue type activities. She has denied herself many joys, many treasures, for many years to fulfill her decision to help protect and care for defenseless animals; when such a person can also reach out beyond her immediate cause such a person reaches a long way and gives far more than you might imagine.

Materialism is a funny thing. Today one of my doctors mentioned to me that a one of the treatments he would like me take (just one of a variety which I need) will cost about six thousand dollars a pop!!! Can you imagine what I thought? Six grand for one treatment and we are bleeding $1500 a day already. Are pills and drops truly so dear, so costly?

He, the optimist, my doctor, thank you God, said he might be able to get me on an evaluation program which would provide the drug free. I have to love his thinking.

I suppose if God wants me to live the drug will be free. But what is the insane system that we have erected to cause the expenses associated with drug development to cost so much? How many sick and dying people can even consider the cost of medications in that price range?

I can only suppose that true cause is, as always, the fine hand of our increasingly incompetent government. The solution, of course, can only be better and less government. And, friend, what sort of criminal thinking creates a world in which insurance, more or less, will only pay for therapies that are conventional and that will almost certainly fail while totally refusing to support alternative methods which are succeeding and have, in some cases, been succeeding for decades? Is this insanity or simply intentional cruelty and profiteering?

Photo Credit, Ridgway evening sky, 2005, looking toward Red Mountain from Ridgway, Colorado, by Terry using an old Dimage X digital.

Throw Away Pot

2009-08-16T23:21:00.000-07:00

A Throw Away Coffee Pot

Most of you know I am rather challenged with a cancer situation that is trying to eat me alive...but little does the cancer know I am winning... thanks to many of your prayers and good wishes.

In the meantime, more than you care to know about almost any subject begins here. We are staying in a one bedroom condo on the Santa Barbara coast with cool sea breezes, the ocean to murmur us to sleep at night and, like all furnished quarters, lots of defective things about.

The tradition four cup coffee pot, designed and ever improved some 30 years ago was my first objection as I do insist on a good cup of coffee.

We were telling my sister Kim about this and that we had not fond a place within 15 miles to buy a coffee pot so she said she would send us a throw away pot.

It arrived at the clinic where I am taking treatments. I would not say it was exactly a throw away pot as it took two UPS drivers to get it up to the second floor of clinic after which we had to hire a taxi driver to haul it down and help us carry it into the condo. We keep hoping she did have to mortgage something to finance the pot.

I don't want to say this pot is LARGE but is BIG. We have negotiated a deal with a neighbor here to let us leave it on his patio at night so we have room to open the dishwasher, the fridge and things like that.

I have been thinking I could rent his patio and maybe open a little al fresco coffee shop with a couple of umbrellas, you know the type that are too hot to sit under if you are Texas but are perfect in Santa Barabara or Paris.

At any rate, it makes the best darned coffee you ever tasted but, following their instruction requires us to use about a half pound of cofffee a day, nevertheless it is really good coffee and does not suffer from all the excitotoxins that come automatically from those places like Star Bucks where they add triple chemical zingers to plain coffee in order to make your eyeballs pop like baby giant firecrackers.

Kim has always been too generous to a fault and has the most open hand and heart one ever heard of.... she has always been far too good to me.

Just so you don't think this is all a picnic, I can hardly type this for the cramps that have plagued me for hours.... but not to worry, I am winning and it is losing.

Photo Credit. Quick throw away shot of Terry and Sky Williams with her attempt to do a painting of the Spring Maiden...... a painting of many tales and, after many trials, created especially for Ann K.

Drugs ineffective against Wilbur Ramsey

2009-08-15T12:16:00.000-07:00

What can you do with a blog, of any sort, except tell stories, and try to correct some errors and omissions? I am not a blogger in the usual sense, I am just looking for ways to communicate these days since I can't do the huge volume of email that used to characterize my daily communications. I need all that energy, now to fight my cancers.

Fighting cancer takes a lot out of you and it takes a huge amount of physical energy away, energy formerly squandered on politics, fighting giant pharma, big agra and others who seem determined not to understand that they poison not only me, not only you, not only the world, but they poison themselves and their own children.... think not?

If you think they are are not killing their own children, let them try to find some absolutely clean water; let them try to eat an absolutely organic chemical free cabbage; let them try to pick a fresh plum that is not covered by xeno dust, powders, chemicals, who knows what chemical insecticides, fungicides, and other fallout; let them eat plums,l apples, and carrots that must suck up water polluted with every sort of medical, agricultural, and human and feed lot chemical, plums that must breathe air that floats like a sort of universal sea of chemicalized, contaminated air prepared as far away as your next town, pollutants from China, radiation from Russia, and other parts... think that we are not all poisoned? Think, think again.

But, as I was saying, I need all that extra energy now, all the energy I can muster to help me process the daily radiation burns and the monumental detoxification on all levels required to fight the aggressor --- a sort of silence, powerful, evil termite that invaded my defense system, and slowly began to consume me, rather like a voracious Trojan Horse hidden in my lungs and bones, digging holes in my spine, trying to collapse my tower of strength, .... who knows when the attack on my body started, who knows how long I lived side by side with my silent, invisible, killing visitor... I had not a clue. Then, in seven incredible days in July, I was determined to be a miracle case: July 12, we never catch it this early, it is small cell carcinoma, only a small patch in your lower left lung.... we can clean it up quickly), about July 5: your condition is very advanced, very serious and it has spread to the spine you have to start some treatment immediately, we are ordering more tests; then, the fateful July 15 when the oncologist, without benefit of all tests told me quickly in less than ten minutes that I only had a two percent chance to survive, that I would be paralyzed in a matter of days.... the termite was trying to finish off my T4 vertebrae and take control of my spinal canal and prepare to lunch on my spinal cord.

I wanted a second opinion, I wanted something besides the virtual death guaranteed by chemotherapy. You can't travel they said; you are dead walking he said. But shortly, I was out of Texas and in California and getting both radiation and alternative therapy..... and boy did I need the radiation to help head off the cancer at the pass commonly called T4... stop them there or call it a day it seemed.... now I have four more days of radiation to go..... gotta love those cobalt canon firing their deadly invisible beams into my deadly cancer termites.

But I digress, I wanted to talk about Wilbur Ramsey, and with you permission, here is what I wanted to say to an old friend. I am writing the following in particular because I failed to thank Wilbur in a prior email ... it was, I think, an odd oversight on my part. I blame it the pain killer drugs with which I am loaded. Drugs are certainly an essential if very excessively used part of our society but they also pose a serious intervention in the brain which may sometimes go unnoticed

Yesterday I was trying to remember people to thank. I wanted to be sure to make note of some very important contributors in my life even though I know there are too many to fully appreciate or recognize, try though I may. At the moment, about 2:15 AM, I am sweating it out again, drenched, and thinking of a friend, a former newspaper editor and publisher --- from the old days when the newspaper was published for the community, not for the political agenda of some far off power broker. And the world was still more or less what we once considered the world to be, unlike the present formless, plastic situation in which nothing is sure on any level.

I failed to mention him in my prior communique and find it odd that he slipped the foggy pain free zone that used to be my ever alert brain.

Wilbur Ramsey and his wife have been friends for a number of years. Wilbur is a dedicated fellow health research aficionado and has often aided us in helping others based on his keen memory and the thousands of pages of true research material which he has read during the last several years.

He has never failed to voluntarily help me by suggesting product sources, offering editorial suggestions, sending or turning me on to some good manufacturing labs. Wilbur is also a fantastic product designer and on his website you can find some of the best alternative products on the market today. Men, in particular, would find Wilbur's prostate product well worth examining along with things like cancer fighting Graviola, Esiak Tea (Canadian Nurse Essie), and AHCC --- the great Japanese mushroom product... I am not saying these things will cure you, cancer, or anything, I am saying they are good products, and well worth investigation and research. Wilbur is a great source for these types of unique products and for information about such types of products.

You can find Wilbur at
www.globalnutritions.com/catalog.htm

But what I wanted to say is that when Wilbur found out I had cancer, the following morning or so, I had a huge box of cancer fighting Graviola, Esiak Tea, and AHCC (active hexose correlated compound) sitting on my desk compliments of Wilbur... even drugs can't make you forget old friends like Wilbur. I did not see an invoice or questions about payment.

This is not the end of this or any story, it is one of many. Shortly I want to tell you a story, an old one, a little story about a gold coin which our friends, Greg and Catherine Leake, know of.

I have been trying also to think of what to say to and about Marti DeCluitt --- http://www.facebook.com/people/Marti-DeCluitt/1321035873 ---a remarkable person, a world class citizen in many ways, and a good friend decade after decade after decade.

Thanks for allowing me to share this memory.

Terry

I regret I still can't deal with open phone lines but I do accept messages at 903-285-6661, I am getting mail here in California and I am getting mail at PO Box 596, Mount Vernon, Texas, 75457, our personal PO Box.

I answer what I can as I can.

2009-08-14T05:46:00.000-07:00

The Opinion --- You have a 2% chance of survival and you will probably be paralyzed in a couple of weeks.

Needless to say, a sane person can hardly go forward with such a premise as a plan of action!!!

Having recently been given a very bad cancer prognosis by some conventional doctors in Texas, I am now in California with one of the world's premier alternative doctors at the Issels Medical Center in Santa Barabara, California where I am doing both alternative and conventional treatments. As my situation is very serious, I think you can at least assume that I am telling you the truth as I see it. As I am on some drugs, I may not be as clear as I would like to be, but these words are my view at the moment, drugs or no.

I wish I had the energy to write all that I would like to communicate but, while I feel I am making progress, and I am still rather weak and can't address many things I would like.

First of all thanks for the huge blessing your thoughts words, works, and resources have been to me in this particular crisis. I strongly suspect that without the immediate surge of support, I might already be history. As it is, circumstances carried me immediately to this wonderful clinic and its very anti-cancer contrarian staff--- they have a world class outlook, almost fifty years of proven experience,and they are winning the broad battle against cancer.

It is pitiful that the standard insurance and medical practice drivers, the PTB (the power that be), of this country are only dedicated to promoting chemo, surgery, and radiation when other, cheaper, and more effective tools are well known..... the big guns in this country just will not support alternative medicine or research yet, though as the cancers spread perhaps their outlook will, at last, change.

Even he worst of things, greed-materialism-immorality-poverty, must collapse in time and we can look forward to a brighter day in these and other arenas. I should mention, that even though my alternative doctors generally oppose radiation, they all agree that I have no alternative but to undergo radiation to stop the invasion of my spine by my rapidly advancing cancer and, hopefully avoid the threat of a spinal collapse and paralysis within a short term.... so I am being daily cooked in my mid back zone with radiation from Cobalt guns... .a surreal experience conducted in near darkness and total silence while giant machines seems to study your body for the best place to take a bite. I regret the need, I do not fear the technology, it is just technology unlike chemo which is just a perfect total body poison... not big deal and I do appreciate the subsequent pain relief I have felt. I was in terrible pain for nearly 15 weeks and the radiation has almost eliminated the pain in four low dose treatments back to back.

If you wonder why I am so busy, just think of this, while I am getting various IV potions, people are busy taking blood, taking temps, weight, blood pressure, oxygen content, and on and on, in the meantime I am being herded up and down the halls going from Far Infrared Therapy... .a way of being cooked at around 125 degrees inside and out and then on to Hyperbaric Oxygen Saturation, very hot and drying in a large plastic tube..... but cancer cannot survive in oxygen... it loves sugar, alcohol, and hates oxygen and fresh green vegetables (these are clues folks).

While these things, and lymphatic massage, and acupuncture and related things go on, I take the equivalent of one pill about every four minutes..... it keeps a fellow busy, not to mention the business of brewing and taking coffee enemas (coffee for enemas is not a Folgers' product' and you tell it is medical coffee by the price :-)

Suzi is exhausted trying to deal with me and my needs and, frankly, without her I would be as near to a dead duck as I would care to be. She is worked to death dealing with trying to keep our little cottage by the bay (Issels Medical Clinic housing) on a diet plan that corresponds to my needs, dealing with my sweats and T-Shirts and such due to the fact that I with my nightly fever condition (detoxification) go three three two or three sets of sweats and underwear a night... or more.

I get very hot, sweat out the suit, then I begin to freeze and have to change into dry clothes at once..... along with this problem I taking drugs to help tamp down pain and inflammation; drugs like hydrocodone (rather like codeine), morphine (which I take as little as possible--really nasty stuff), prednisone which helps with pain and inflammation (and worse, perhaps) it makes me so emotional that I can hardly speak at times.... I know it drives Suzi crazy, when she says, "Be careful or how do you feel?" and I respond by tearing up or telling her I will cut her heart out and serve it up on a raw onion taco.... this will test the limits of any relationship.

In the dark of the night, I think of better times, not that these are not great, Thank You God, I listen to or read Marty Kleva (Thank You God) and her works regarding stress and overcoming major body trauma -- you can find Marty at http://www.gemfireair.com/, and I often read from Martina Newberry's poetry collection where we can all discover that we are somehow attached to Blue Island and Martina and each other (Thank You God.)

Most of you know Suzi is very petite, has small structure and hands and it hard for her to handle heavy things, jar lids, and such, and yet here she is stuck with lifting everything in our life... I can't even lift a quart jar and the laundry weighs more than she does.

I have to sign off..... I am hopeful of some sleep.

I do want especially to thank Caroline Durston of Spa Rio Caliente ( a great place for rest, R&R, and to dump some stress) near Guadalajara, in old Mexico, for her quick, forceful, positive support and encouragement, to Edna Hennessee of Dream Valley the quick influx of a priceless supply of Aloe Mystery and WLA 132 --- two of the most powerful agents in the world against radiation burns and effective against cancer, --- if you have an interest in Aloe, Edna is the expert with the best, purest aloe on the planet, in my opinion, and she also provides great private label product services and fine aloe drinks --- and of course, all thanks to my wonderful family, Kim and Todd in particular, for providing us an easy way to make the planes and arrive here promptly.

I want to thank the Deerings, old Taos friends, who daily continue to help me with certain types of bioenergetic information and symbols (peculiar to the type of exceptional and unique body information that the Deerings have developed in connection with healing) The Deerings can be found through Spirit Emergence of Taos --- if you have a health problem you can't overcome, these folks are well worth consulting. Trust me, I have many more to thank for many things including those who, like Marty Kleva, Marty DeCluitt, my wife's family, and my own family, seem to have always been ready in the background.

Believe me, I am doing all I can to beat this and will, in due course, bring the news about how to do it to the public in anyway that I can. Suzi and I will soon put up a website to explain what we have learned and to share that with others.... I imagine we are going ahead to make this some sort of donor/subscription/and free service but these, and other events remain to unfold in their own good time.

In closing, some of you who know me well, may be amused that there is long chance that an attack by a buffalo, now about 30 years ago, may have a role in my current health battle; seems that some elk and some buffalo are infected with brucellosis which has many similarities to cancer... it will be another week before we have these answers.

The best I can suggest to you at this time is to broaden your relationship with whatever your version of the Great Spirit is, eat raw green leafy vegetables, drop all the stress you can, cut sugar and alcohol and smoking at once, and, every day, for every challenge, for every pain, for every second chance, just say, "Thank You, God, Thank You."

Terry Turner

Oncologist says It's Over

2009-07-26T18:26:00.000-07:00

The Dire Oncologist Says It's Over

Dear Friends, I have received a near guaranteed death sentence.

It is non operable lung cancer that has spread to spine, ribs, and perhaps other areas in the skeleton. The cancer is busy eating my spinal column and trying to invade the spinal canal an and attack the spinal cord itself.

The oncologist told Suzi and I that there was a 2% chance of survival even with chemo. Alternative clinics have much higher success rates and we are researching them as well as other treatments.

I am posting a closed for inventory sale. All our time from now on will be spent on research for a cure. Since we are in the rapids and time is of the essence, we will not have much time for conversations. You can imagine that I would love to visit with all my old friends and family, but I must have my available energy for research and working up my own protocol or at least a protocol to attack this cancer.

I love and appreciate you, and to the extent I can I will keep you informed. I trust you understand that I do not accept that I am a dead man and I entirely reject this callous death sentence on behalf of myself and my wife, Susan.

Terry

Photo Credit, unknown, maybe by Suzi, of the Church at Abiquiqu, New Mexico long ago, far away.

Nothing

2009-06-27T18:20:00.000-07:00

Terry Turner, copyright, 2009

Several years ago, about 1983, I erected a small sign near Piedras Negras.

It read:

"Nothing unimportant ever happens."

That comment was followed by this comment, for I wanted it to be a clear sign:

July 83

A frog croaked once.

Piedras Negras, Mexico

Next time I go back there, if I ever make it back there, I shall put up another sign in confirmation of the first sign.

Our world is slipping away but, midst the hot dogs, the beer, the telly, the cd, the vcr, the i-phone or that phone, the struggle to pay the rent, mortgage or utilities, the orgasms and the lack of orgasms, no one notices that we have become slaves.

It will be July in a few days; the world will begin to shake. Suddenly everything will be more important than ever before.

Of course, some could successfully argue that nothing important ever happens; and some could argue that the worst never happens---certainly that would be my preference.

Perhaps, if I get back to Piedras Negras, I shall put up a sign that says "Less, dear friends, less is more." Think of less las you would think about emptiness. Emptiness is what makes things useful, as we all know; the window is useful by its empty space; the glass could not be filled if it were not empty; less requires less protection; less time, and less investment of capital and energy. Less is great indeed.

Photo Credit. Probably taken by Ron K.
Terry and Gene disagree over vital points circa 1984

Buffalo Walk

2009-06-19T15:57:00.000-07:00

Coyright, Terry Turner, 2009

A leaf from an old journal...

"... Returning across the prairies plagued by grass fires, fires which roamed across the land much like giant herds of buffalo had done in the past, I felt I had been forever walking as it is a long walk from the Alabama Coushatta off to the South to reach the Kickapoo and Wichita of the North. Where the fire had fed some days past, the charcoal black earth is already studded with the multimillion emerald green fingers of promised grass.

Can home be so far? ..."

Near old Fort Richardson

Jacksboro, Texas and miles to go

Winter, 1976

My Delivery -- adventures in an old notebook

2009-06-17T11:23:00.000-07:00

My Delivery -- adventures in an old notebook

Copyright, Terry Turner, 2009

Several years ago an unusual fellow, a recluse of sorts, who lives back off the Canon Road came to call with a small painting to sell, as he occasionally had done before. The Canon road is an eastward extension of Kit Carson and runs from Taos and on up to Angel Fire and is also the Taos route to Eagle Nest. An amazing assortment of clever, creative folk live up in the Canon; but then an amazing number of clever creative people live all over Taos and New Mexico in general.

This fellow, Phineas, came by our gallery, the old Field’s Gallery on Kit Carson, to drop off one his rarely produced paintings --- a primitive as they say, a piece of one by sixteen inch pine on which he had carved a red bird about to eat a small red apple --- very primitive and very powerful, almost archetypal. The artist, writer, philosopher, recluse, Phineas T. Strongtoe, was stopping by also to give me a small stack of notebooks, the scholastic sort which comes with blank lined papers bound in a cardboard cover, “Someone will call for these in a day or two, just hand it to her will you?” I said I would hand them over when asked for. That was in the fall of 1999. I tucked notebooks away in my desk and time continued, as usual, to go by.

Suzi and I personally collected most of his work but one day I had the bird piece on display and sold it on a whim. Who knows why? I always wished that I had not sold it. At least I sold it to a nice lady; a resident of Taos, who seemed to appreciate the work and whose name, regretfully, at the moment I do not recall.

Lots more time went by and I did not think of Phineas or the notebooks.

Then in the summer of 2001 there were some forest fires in the Taos area, worrisome fires; even worse fires came in 2002, and in 2003 came what was generally called the Great Encebado Fire. It was a huge tree eating fire and it burning a little over a couple of miles from our gallery door. We were advised to be ready to evacuate at once --- you’ve no idea how that order feels when you are looking at a million dollars worth of art with no labor or transport available to move it. Most people who could leave the zone had already done so. The smoke settled over the town and Suzi and I were trying to breathe by using fans to blow air laden with smoke particles through wet sheets that we hoped would be a sort of air filter. It was dicey to say the least. During the last smoke filled week, with a thousand fire fighters that were still unable to beat the Encebado fire back, Suzi and I were overcome with a sort of wistfulness for the clean air and snows of Colorado. The exhausted fighters eventually, courageously prevailed but not without an incredible effort.

Which brings us back to Strongtoe’s notebooks; years had gone by and no one had called for the notebooks and Strongtoe had not returned to sell us any of his primitive artwork. Further, I had been unable to make any contact with the person Strongtoe had mentioned; one Sunday we drove down to Santa Fe only to get reports that person had gone, we were told, to the island of Bimini as part of a search team looking for a long lost treasure.

I passed the Strongtoe notebooks from my desk to my important papers file and they moved with us, in due course, to Colorado and here and there, thereafter. No word of Strongtoe, no word of any sort ever came.

At last I determined to do what I think is reasonable. I am publishing a passage, a few pages, from one notebook to “signal” Phineas and the other person that I still have these and that I can be contacted.

Have I read the notebooks? After more than a decade, what do you think? I have read every fascinating word.

Here then, is what I think of as the delivery from the journals of ever elusive Phineas Strongtoe. Here then are the words of Strongtoe in a passage titled, The Mechanical Grandmother and Other Tales

In dreaming deep, I found myself traveling in company with an awesome Angel who cradled the eyeless corpse of ethics as we searched for the Forbidden Key which, hopefully, might restore it to life.

Sometimes walking, sometimes flying, we went down an endless trail of lifeless schools and churches, churches and schools long dead, yet peopled to overflowing. Filled with crowds who sought the Word of God but instead were taught a litany hate hymns by the songs of hollow eyed teaches, hollow word preachers, deaf rabbis, and shadowy priests and professors whose reason flowed from agendas with no reference to science or reason. A gaggle of leaders and teachers who masturbated public guilt cubes and were trapped in huge glass bottles; bottles corked and red wax sealed with history that had long since forgotten how to smile having been many times rewritten to suit the passing treason. Passing those ghostly rows of churches and schools, busily recording what they lied, amazed, I watched, I witnessed, and I saw that they grew and expanded even though they had long since died.

On we went. Plunging through the darkness until at last we came upon a sea, oily black, whereon floated murky barques of misty pharaohs waiting, waiting for a czar. With smoky breath dripping perdition, my foul Angel said those pharaohs waited in vain because the czar remained beneath a great pyramid, fearful of the god gating prophet murderers who had captured Love and raped her to sire a new and terrible religion.

Throughout that infected sea and all around its shores stood cat-eyed high priests who shouted orders at a master mummy, a pharaoh monster that plunged through the reeds and struggled over the whispering sands in pursuit of the wife of Atlantis, she who built the great pyramids of the world in a single day with eleven little songs.

At length we passed out of that dreadful oily place and thence across the towering mountains of Detroit. There we dined with diamond and chrome sprayed death skulls. While we sparing ate, the huge skulls raced madly round the larded table and pleaded with us to kiss their lumbering creations and cozy coffins. Near at hand, sparkling by the light of a smoky sun, the Master Skull hosted whole squads of little flower girls in white and gave them pretty gifts of tiny cancer pills while he directed them away on paths towards frigidity and fear; all while the Master Skull hummed, “Adroit, Adroit, Adroit.” Leaving, at last, that gruesome hall, climbing over piles of cash and loot, we went out of their plastic and steel forest and, tiredly, continued on our way.

Trudging through thick sunlight we went on and on ‘til we came along the rims of Chicago’s mighty stone canyons, where, hardly glancing down into that shadowy world, we could see lumbering dinosaurs that ate the earth at a fearful rate. Queer they seemed, their gigantic jaws sucking up the planet while their feet were hardly troubled by the herds of innocent dreams which they trampled underfoot.

Passing strange it was to watch the crowded skies overhead and thereabout, skies filled with militarized eagles, and propaganda robots, all made by an electronic giant. These incredible machines combined to hurl wars, weather, czars, and kingdoms round the planet like so much confetti.

A long night later we came to another, darker place where a demonic Scorpion held the way, a watering hole of white houses, statues, and a people whose suckling habits had made of them ghoulish vampires; they preferred not blood and life so much as liberty and death. Its golden tail arched into the sky and seemed to obscure the very stars; that Goliath-like stinger could strike almost any place on the planet with out cause or warning. Despair dripped from its venomous stinger and the monster thing laughed with rogue gods which had been released from deep pits dug by the great old universities. Those gods had long since eaten nations entire, those gods kept score on loveless white sheets and even though each tally exceeded all other tallies, no tally sufficed except that they screamed in unison, “More! More! More!”

Overall, uberalles, the scorpion waved giant shark teeth filled pincers. In the left it held crushed and bloody Hope; in the right pincer squirmed the headless body of dying Truth. When the Scorpion opened its cancerous mouth, we saw its bloody lips infected with the putrid forms of crushed morals and rotted ethics, and worse, worse, worse, it chilled my soul to see the bleached bones of faulted orgasms lying there in countless millions. In the midst of that horrible scene sat pseudo religion singing Dark Age harmony along with omnipotent government. Between their happy harmonics, sung by the light of cadres of burning poets, it made me vomit to see how those two whored on the chained body of Education. I forced myself to look upon her and I saw the spittle oozing from her cracked lips, the bloody milk that dripped from her shredded breasts and fell like tears raining upon her wasted wormy womb. Maggots, thoughtless millions, fed upon her wounds and then took their leave bearing the ignorance with which they came. My ghastly Angel pulled me away from that scene and we continued.

Beyond, beyond we went, the ghastly Angel ever beckoning, rotting garments falling from its wretched body, always urging me on as we searched for the forbidden key. At last we came upon a swamp wherein the trees, dead and bleached bone white, reached hundreds of feet into the leaden lifeless sky. The still waters of that land rotted and the watery surface reflected nothing, nothing at all. Each and every bone white tree was topped by a timeless cross. Each cross bore the stapled body of a mutilated truth. To each little truth was sewn a silken banner, royal purple with a shimmering edge of golden thread. The banners emblazoned in identical legal grimaces, a sort of Latin, that decreed, “Don’t read, Don’t touch; don’t stand, don’t stop, don’t think.”

Deeper and deeper we plunged into that swamp ‘til the murky waters gave way to a foggy lies that chilled our limbs and obscured our way. Finally, we came upon an island constructed of the deaths of past and future heroes. Round and round its crumbling edge marched what passed for parents, parents without number, marching round and round. Half, at least were blind and the others would not see. They sang and chatted gaily as they marched. Periodically, en masse, they rushed into the swamp and seized rusting and defective mechanical grandmothers that the parents used, club like, to beat their own hapless offspring in lifeless submission which, thereby, assured a successful transmission of future mindlessness and servitude.

In the center of that mad island was a giant sarcophagus crafted of perished traditions, stone legislated customs, and gold. The sarcophagus bore a burnished plate inscribed, “Here lays the body of the Word of God.” Where the date should been there spun a comic clock which I little understood, but it was plain that the death of the Word had occurred and was occurring at every minute of every hour that had ever been. Beside that tomb stood the rotting body of a Prophet who could not die and looked ghostly, ghostly like old Wilhem Reich, “Here,” said he, “here lies the Word, here lies the Truth, they don’t want you to touch it, don’t touch it, don’t ever touch it.” In his hand lay a great key.

My ghastly Angel took the great key from the Prophet’s rotting hand, the key to access the monolithic sarcophagus, and as we moved away, the Prophet winced with pain as a peculiar creature pinched little chunks of flesh from his rotting body and stuffed the rotted meat into its fourowuncee mouth, “I got mine, I got mine,” it sang with glee, “I got mine, I got mine.”

While the creature worked to consume the substance of the Prophet, my fearsome Angel and I mounted to the lid of the sarcophagus and there, rising on steps constructed of the compressed and living bodies of Saints who screamed in torment as their minds and souls were being processed into a sort of sugary jell by a college of academicians and politicians. From that squirming mass, glass encased, came a mournful wail and it seemed to me a chant, “Let them touch it, let them read, let them think, let them touch it.” Painfully we advanced over those horrid twenty two steps, the Angel and I, until we arrived at the top and struggled to open the entry way which was blocked entirely by tortured bears whipped by half gurus and empty journalists. My Angel cast them down and they fell arguing among heaps of cash registers and curiously attractive rocks and other toys while the bears raced to escape the island. Using the Prophet’s great key, we unlocked the entry.

Where those poor bears had danced, there at once appeared seven beautiful globes of shimmering light and by their light, at last, we saw within the entry, a simple iron key, the forbidden key. We used it to open a hidden passage, and thus entered the sarcophagus. Looking in, it seemed a cellar, and deep it was, and dark. Carefully we wended the narrow steps moving ever towards a distant light. An hour or more, we wandered down, though some might count that hour a lifetime, and at last we passed from darkness into a sunny room.

In the center that room sat a giant of man with a soft curly beard and a merry laugh that bounded back like a sort of happy thunder from the very walls of the room. Most notable of all, deep behind each startling blue eye flashed sudden rays of light that seemed to touch and measure us. Each glance a complete assessment it seemed to us. We laughed to see cuddled all about the place jolly babies, lots and lots of laughing babies who sat on his lap and played in his beard. That giant, rather like an over sized Santa Claus, played on with the babies and we felt powerful energies emanating from them, like damped atomic fires. I was thunderstruck to see, coming to life, as though never dead, the corpse of Ethics, which the Angel had carried this long, long time and distance.

And the giant, without ceasing, spoke to the babies, continuously, saying to each and every one, to each individually and to all collectively, “Read, touch, reflect, reason, evaluate, think. Be free in your mind.”

At last the giant took note of us and reaching out he pluck a large stone from the wall of that chamber and, using his finger for a stylus, he wrote a message on the stone and then tossed it to us. The Angel caught the stone and we retired to the stairway and went wending our way to the top. When at last we had climbed the well and locked again the secret entry to the sarcophagus, the Angel drew me to the light of the seven globes and motioned for me to read the words graven in the stone.

Simple it was but it chilled me deep, for it read, “Teach not babies to forget that which they knew by nature long before they knew you or education.” And though I only read it, in my mind I heard those words like a distant angry thunder and I wondered, how long can men and women thrive and prosper in willful resistance to God?

There was date at the bottom of the message, it read, Jan 12, 1976, 1900 hours (7 P.M.) with the initials PTS just above the date.

There were some editorial marks and some word corrections which had been put here and there by Strongtoe, but they were illegible in the main. I have not, in this text, made any reference to them.

So this is, so to speak, my attempted delivery. Perhaps the reader is the recipient upon whom I yet wait.

Even as I prepare to post this, I can almost hear someone ask, more or less, “What does it mean?” To which I must now reply, in advance, “I don’t know. Does it mean something? Perhaps it means nothing. A dreamer’s dream of a dream. Please don’t ask me. If it has no meaning for you, I can give it no meaning for you.”

Photo Credit: The photo is of Clair, our clairvoyant hippo, a true glass flower aficionado. Clair was a gift from my sister to Suzi. The hippo is at home in our collection of blown glass roses.

Photo by Suzi with an old Minolta Dimage X.

Why Get Ready? Be Ready!!!

2009-06-09T17:27:00.000-07:00

Copyright, Terry Turner, 2009

Why Get Ready for Emergencies? Because, if you aren't ready first, you cannot get ready. Make up your mind to be ready. Know where your go-bag is and have the right stuff in it.

The following list is just a list; a scratch pad. It will give you a way to begin to think about what you have and what you might need in an emergency. It will not all fit in a go-bag which is ready for a grab and run scene whereas having 25 pounds of pinto beans is something you can store around your house. There are many levels of preparedness and you have to develop a plan that suits your needs.

There are many ways to improve on this list and I welcome anyone to give me further suggestions and remarks.

I have found that many things need to be organized to meet any crisis and one thing I want to mention that has helped me is the plain old fly fishing vest. It has a lot of pockets and those pockets can hold a wide array of small objects. I use a one vest and one soft go-bag as my absolute emergency must have kit. It has everything in it from iodine-monkey blood, upholstery needles and carpet thread to potassium iodide in the event of an atomic-attack (if you don’t know what this is for, you need to, especially if you have kids).

The following list also corresponds, roughly, to things that may be first to disappear in a crisis of any sort.This list does not put a great deal of emphasis on food and water which must be prime considerations, but it does list things that may be hard to get in the event of a hurricane or anything that disrupts traffic and delivery systems.

Let me say that few people have the money or a spare cabin in the woods with which to purchase and store everything. Getting as ready as one might like to be seems a daunting task but just start small, according to your ability, and build up your readiness supplies. If you put aside a few gallons of water, a few cans of mackerel, and a good flashlight, you will, with that small beginning, probably be better prepared than most. Just begin and then, in the event of a crisis, you can help yourself and others. In a crisis, the responders need all the help they can get and if you can take care of yourself or your family, you will take a big load off the first responders.

For short term preparations, I have found the following link helpful:
http://www.hmscrown.com/life_tools/emergency_be_prepared.html

And, for long term survival type information, I recommend the following links for information regarding supplies, tools, equipment, etc. I also note that the original form of the list below may have been shown or originated at the following link:
http://www.millennium-ark.net/

For related and very interesting information I suggest the George Ure site
http://urbansurvival.com/ George also offers an invaluable little book, Live on Ten Thousand A Year. The book will stimulate your thinking and provide some great information.

1. Gasoline and other generators. For the most part they are expensive, heavy, expensive to operate, and of course, fuel dependent; gas acquisition and gas storage are possible dangers; they are also noisy, have to be maintained, and clearly are an obvious target for thieves of every class. In regard to this type of power, it will be advisable to check out solar or wind charging and similar devices.

2. Water filters/purifiers (and information on how to clean up water with bleach, iodine, etc.—you cannot be too informed about water). In a pinch, primitive is better than nothing. Suzi and I use a Berkey Water Filter system, but there are many kinds and of course combinations may be indicated.

3. Portable toilets – and consider camping stool toilets which will require lots of plastic bags for sanitation.

4. Seasoned firewood, or at least firewood and don’t forget saws and axes and other firewood processing tools.

As I have had a lot of experience chopping firewood, I strongly advise having at least two axes, one single head, one double head, and a couple of sizes of wedges for splitting large logs and such. When Suzi and I were living in Colorado with four foot snows, I split more wood with a six pound sledge hammer and wedge than I have with an axe. If you have the luxury of a shed or tarps to keep wood dry you will grow to appreciate it, if you don’t you can make a field roof with sticks, branches, leaves and grass over the wood pile to help keep it dry… this is rather essential in snow country when the weather will freeze all the wood into one solid clump.

5. Lamp oil, wicks, lamps (there are various ways to make lamps though the types of fuel are very limited; learn all you can; stick with clear oil, but get any oil you can.

6. Coleman or similar fuels – get all and stock all that you can; for your purposes and for trade.

7. Guns, ammunition --- any ammo, even if you can’t use it ammo will be a big barter item. Also pepper spray, knives, clubs, bats and high quality slingshots; quality air pistols and rifles; and dare I say quality bows and arrows

8. Hand operated-can openers and hand egg beaters, whisks, large stainless steel spoons, forks, turners, and tools that make large batch cooking easier --- you can also use the same tools for small batch cookery. Knife sharpeners such as stones, files, etc. are essential. Most people will be well advised to be sure to have at least one heavy duty large file and one smaller fine file for various purposes.

9. Honey/syrups/white, brown sugars; I would avoid artificial sweeteners except for trade goods or for dietary reasons.

10. Rice; Beans & Wheat

11. Vegetable oils and lards for cooking, baking and efficiency in food preparation.

12. Charcoal and charcoal lighter fluid; Zippo or similar lighters (the cigarette type) and lighter fluid. I have in a pinch used alcohol to fill a Zippo lighter.

13. Water containers --- hard clear plastic is best, you can’t have too many.

14. Mini Heater head for heating rooms with propane. There are a variety of possibilities here so think it through but zero degree, or better, sleeping bags are no mistake when thinking about staying warm. Propane cylinders

15. Grain Grinder (Non-electric); if you have lots of space and money, hand coffee mills, meat grinders, etc.

16. Propane Cylinders, butane, and all compressed type gas supplies.

17. Survival library (can be printed pages, books, etc.) If you don’t have experience or a clue, you need to do some reading NOW.

18. Spare lamp mantles: Aladdin, Coleman, etc.

19. Baby Supplies: mosquito hood/cover, thermometer, diapers; formula; ointments; aspirin, etc.

20. Washboards, tubs, mop bucket w/wringer to help with laundry… this could be priceless.

21. Cook stoves (propane, Coleman and kerosene, etc.). I personally urge all my (Terry’s) readers to learn (PRACTICE) cooking outside on a wood fire --- learning to make bread or biscuits in an iron Dutch oven is, I believe essential training---and if you do a good slow chicken stew you’ll have some great meal experiences and you won’t feel totally lost when you have to produce a meal. Obviously, you may need to practice how to build a camp fire, maintain it, and control it.

22. Vitamins --- do the best you can but I would avoid One-A-Day or Centrum, which, in my opinion, are among the worst for bio-available nutritional value.

23. Propane Cylinder Handle-Holder---small canister use is dangerous without this item.

24. Hygiene for men, women, and children---hair care, skin care, products, razors, combs, toothbrushes, Tampax, etc. Keep yourself cleaned up or your morale will suffer. The best all purpose, instant results, a little goes a long way, backed by a 110% money back guarantee of satisfaction is Royal Gold Serum from HMS Crown.

25. Thermal underwear (tops and bottoms; socks, outer jackets, etc.)

26. Bow saws, axes and hatchets and wedges, files, stones, sharpening oil, hammers, sledge hammers, and similar tools. Good small and large shovels, well sharpened are very useful.

27. Aluminum foils, regular and heavy duty, for cooking, food preservation, and barter. Strictly speaking I would avoid cooking in aluminum for health reasons and always try to do your cooking in iron pans and pots.

28. Gasoline containers (plastic or metal). Gasoline is dangerous so be sure you know how to store it and know about stabilizing it; gas will deteriorate.

29. Garbage bags, plastic bags, paper bags of every description, as many as possible. Save you plastic or paper grocery bags. Important for food preservation, and, in connection with a field toilet, for taking a dump and keeping the area clean.

30. Toilet paper, Kleenex, paper towel, etc. Let’s hope we don’t get down to leaves and grass.

31. Milk - powdered and condensed, dry and canned, (shake liquid every 2 or 3 months.)

32. Garden seeds (non-hybrid); if you don’t know how to grow something, practice… plant yourself a little, even tiny, victory garden, even if it only has a plant or two… learn how to care for a plant.

33. Clothes pins/line/hangers and clips of every sort. Clothes can be dried on bushes, but you will prefer a line and pins. When thinking of pins consider a supply of safety pins, straight pins, and needles for use and trade.

34. Repair kits --- i.e. whether it is your generator or your Coleman stove, there are repair kits and suggested maintenance items… you will need them and the instructions

35. Tuna fish (in oil); personally I think mackerel is a better choice. Beware of broth added products which will make you weaker rather than stronger.

36. Fire extinguishers, large boxes of ordinary baking soda in every room, or, at least, pails of water holding old towels soaked, covered in water and ready to go.

37. First aid kits of every description….you can’t be oversupplied here. The government is driving plain old iodine off the market so, if your pharmacy or grocer still offers it, stock up on it. Iodine is cheap and effective. Some pharmacies will still order it for you.

38. Batteries (all sizes ... check for distant expiration dates). Try to get solar and wind up

39. Garlic, spices and vinegar, baking supplies and spices for medicine---cayenne pepper, ginger, turmeric-curcumin. Fresh garlic uncooked and chewed raw is best for medical use. Garlic remains a fantastic natural antibiotic. A couple of good health books that tell you how to use foods and spices would be great. I also suggest Adelle Davis’ book, Let’s Get Well, which explains the use of vitamins.

40. Dogs and cats need to eat…. I don’t have any pets so I really can’t comment on that. As a child in my cotton picking era, I know that our dogs survived on table scraps, grease gravy and the occasional biscuit or cornbread.

41. Flour, yeast and salt. Suzi and I really suggest that you learn to make and use sourdough which eliminates the need for yeast and makes a much healthier product. Salt and yeast would probably make good trade items.
Get some small baggies so you could dish out salt in one ounce trade units.

42. Matches "Strike Anywhere" preferred. Boxed, wooden matches are essential if only for trade goods.

43. Writing paper/pads/pencils/solar calculators

44. Insulated ice chests these are good for storage, keeping varmits out and to help prevent freezing in the winter.

45. Very good gloves and very good work boots, strong belts, Levis, overalls, and durable shirts.

46. Flashlights, light Sticks and torches, candles, lamps. Etc.

47. Journals, diaries and scrapbooks to organize your thoughts, conserve events, etc.

48. Garbage cans plastic, these will work for storing water; if they have wheels they are a type of transport similar to a wheelbarrow (which would no doubt be very useful for moving wood and heavy things).

49. Men's Hygiene: essentially the same as item 24 above--- men and women may have some special needs and you alone know what that would be. For example, I need a pedicure razor due an old foot injury that requires trimming every month or so.

50. Cast iron cookware---nothing can replace cast iron, after that enamel ware, and last try heavy duty aluminum (I do mean heavy) and . I would advise against the non-stick type of cookware---under all conditions. It may be dangerous to your health; and it will not last; and you will wind up eating a lot Teflon as it wears off the pans.. It is important to have enough cookware. I think you should try to have covers for all pots and all pans. If you are not comfortable using iron, please consider learning how to use it. One set of iron lasts for lifetime(s). I am using some iron that belong to my grandmother; my mother tried to wear it out; and I have done my best but it is still as new as serviceable as when it was new. Iron wear is definitely not part of our new disposable value system… it is an enduring investment. I suggest American iron, not imported iron; not the new specialty light weight iron.

51. Fishing supplies and all the bell and whistle tools that go with fishing.

52. Mosquito coils, repellent sprays, and creams. Some people have luck taking riboflavin (Vitamin B2) as a repellent, and I know you will have some luck with small amounts of citronella, geranium oil, and wintergreen. I have also had moderate success spraying orange oil over my clothes.

53. Duct tape, wire, rope, cord, twine, rubber bands, bungee cords, string, and all sorts of glue and similar tapes. Duct tape can used and has been used to repair many things including clothes, tents, windows, shoes, etc.

54. Tarps, plastic sheeting—the stronger, thicker the better, anchors, spikes, and stakes, nails from largest to smallest.

55. Candles and methodology regarding candles. For example you can make a candle of sorts by rolling a sheet of paper into a tight tube, soaking it grease or kerosene and get a bit of a credible light.

56. Laundry detergent, dry and liquid, and soaps of every sort. You’ll need more soap than ever before.

57. Backpacks, duffel bags, go-bags, travel bags, etc. Packs and bags of all types, soft will probably give you the best service.

58. Garden tools and supplies---don’t forget NON-HYBRID seeds.

59. Scissors, fabrics and sewing supplies---good scissors are likely to be critical. Along with sewing supplies I strongly suggest upholstery needles, straight and curved, and upholstery and carpet grade thread--- all heavy duty thread for repair work.

60. Canned fruits, veggies, soups, stews, etc.

61. Bleach plain, NOT scented: 4 to 6% sodium hypochlorite.

62. Canning supplies (Jars/lids/wax) AND canning instructions.

63. Knives of every description and sharpening tools: files, stones, steel both for your own service and for trade.
You can’t have too many tools. I routinely buy butcher knives at garage sales.

64. Bicycles and related tires/tubes/pumps/chains, etc. Even if you don’t ride a bike some of these things may be good to trade for goods or services.

65. High quality sleeping bags and blankets, pillows, mats, frames to stay off the ground, lawn loungers, etc.

66. Carbon Monoxide Alarm (battery powered)

67. Books, board games, cards, magazines. How to books would be a good choice. Don’t forget some health reference books. How to, cooking books, health books and such will be very important but man can not live by how to alone. Good literature will be essential. Suzi and I very like the amazing poetry of Martina Newberry http://martina.rollwiththechanges.org/
And we enjoy the work and ideas of Marty Kleva
http://nmwildwriter.blogspot.com/ A little collection of Carl Jung or whatever your favorite topic is will be useful.

68. d-Con Rat poison, MOUSE PRUFE II, Roach Killer, and similar.

69. Mousetraps, Ant traps and cockroach magnets

70. Paper, plastic plates/cups/utensils---you can’t have too many if you dishwasher doesn’t work or if you no longer have access to one.

71. Baby Wipes, oils, waterless and Anti-bacterial soap (saves a lot of water)

72. Rain gear, rubberized boots, etc. Good rain gloves are important.

73. Shaving supplies (razors, blades, and creams, talc, after shave)

74. Hand pumps and siphons (for water and for fuels), extra plastic tubing in assorted sizes. Just a few feet of extra tubing could make a difference.

75. Soy sauce, vinegar, bouillons/gravy/soup base

76. Reading glasses, magnifying glasses, binoculars

77. Chocolate, cocoa, tang, punch (water enhancers), teas.

78. "Survival-in-a-Can" and Survival knife with compass, fishing gear, etc.

79. Woolen clothing, scarves, ear-muffs; mittens; socks, overcoats.

80. Boy Scout Handbook (also, Leader's Catalog). There is probably a scout store somewhere near you.

81. Roll-on Window Insulation Kit, plastic sheets, acrylic sheets, tarps, etc.

82. Graham crackers, saltines, pretzels, trail mixes/jerky --- instructions on how to jerk meat.

83. Popcorn, peanut butter, nuts

84. Socks, Underwear, T-shirts, etc. (season appropriate and extras)

85. Lumber (all types) plywood, 2x4, 4x4, etc.

86. Wagons, carts, wheelbarrows for transport to and from flea markets and barter groups.

87. Cots and Inflatable Mattresses (for extra guests)

88. Gloves: Work/warming/gardening, etc. You may want to check gloves for types. I have to have leather gloves, then I like the cotton type dipped in some kind rubberized material that makes a great weed pulling glove. I like rubberized or plasticized gloves for working in the rain.

I can tell you one thing about gloves in the winter, and especially at night in Colorado and similar places, or anywhere the freezing "norther" blows: you can't afford to have wet hands if you are trying to work outside. You must do what it takes to keep your hands dry or you'll freeze your fingers in a heart beat. I have seen north winds in Wichita Falls, Texas that would literally freeze the legendary nautical brass balls and I have tried to chop wood at forty below in Colorado... my advice is to split and harvest your wood in the bright sunlight, stay dry and warm at night. You can always make a little kindling sitting by your fire while you enjoy a warm mug of tea or chocolate. And, by the way, I should say thanks to John Rau, my bookseller, who taught me every thing I know about chopping wood. John has a great, huge book store and is a good source for obscure books and he and Alex have thousands of used books of every description:

http://theosophical.ning.com/profile/WizardsBookshelfJohnRau

89. Lantern Hangers, various S hooks, and rods that can be made to hang various things of various weights.

90. Screen Patches, glue, nails, screws, nuts and bolts

91. Teas, coffees, chocolates --- personal use and barter

92. Coffee and coffee substitutes --- personal use and barter

93. Cigarettes and tobacco for barter

94. Wine, liquors (for bribes, medicinal, etc.)

95. Paraffin wax

96. Glue, nails, nuts, bolts, screws, fasteners of all types, etc.

97. Chewing gum/candies --- personal use and barter

98. Atomizers (for cooling/bathing) --- a good collection of bottles and sprayers that will mist or spray will be very useful.

99. Sturdy hats and large cotton neckerchiefs

100. Goats, rabbits, and chickens may be worth considering in the urban survival scene.

This list is not original with me… I got it somewhere in the Y2K era; I think from Stan Deyo in a book or email or from a website--- I regret that I am not sure of the exact original source. Lists of this type are common and I have made extensive modifications to "my" list, above.

We do not sell any product or any information or any subscription in connection with this list, no emergency supplies, no vitamins, etc.

My personal feeling is that as we approach the winter of 2009, good preparations will be increasingly important for all of us.

Be prepared, you’ll never regret it.

Be prepared, if not for yourself, for your neighbors and for your children.

Terry

Photo credit. The Great Encebado Fire, Taos New Mexico, 2003, near our gallery on Kit Carson Road. I think Susan Kregel Turner took the photo---though I am not sure. The raged for days, we managed to breathe by using fans to force air through wet sheets. After years of previous fires we began long for the green trees and longer snow season in Colorado; ultimately we returned to Ridgway, near Telluride, where we daily had coffee with Red Mountain looking down on our patio. More fire photos by Taos artist, Kevin McDermott http://www.hmscrown.com/fine_art/McDermott/Taos_Fire.html

Diogee to be Jailed

2009-05-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

or Never get between a drug company and a chemo sale

First of all please be informed that I do not know what I am writing about. Sometimes I have feelings that have little to do with facts and I have met few facts that had anything to do with feelings. Also, I realize that many of you do not yet know my world famous dog, Diogee, or how he became a pig, but that is your loss and another story.

This story is about how Diogee come to go to jail when he had cancer a while back. You have to admit that cancer is about as unpleasant a subject as you would care to read about, never mind the pain, aggravation, and going to jail and all such might be associated with a person or a dog or a hog for that matter.

Anyway it is pretty simple. I could tell Diogee was not feeling too good. He usually helps me with the mail and all. Generally he will bring in mail left by the United States Post Office and he will throw the first class stuff on my desk and then he generally will trash the rest or use it fluff up his bedding --- he puts a great store by grocery store inserts for his bed but he does not care for things like Office Depot catalogs. Generally he will help me lick stamps and seal envelopes and such. But he was acting too tuckered to do any of that and finally I ast him if he was feeling poorly and whether he wanted to go to Vet.

It took me a two or three weeks to convince him to go. Diogee and the Vet had previously had some run ins at the city council meetings and Diogee really did not want to go see him; after all who would want to go see a Vet that had voted for a twenty million dollar tax bond; but she was the only Vet in the county.

This is a pretty long story, any one can see that, so I am going to shorten it up right here, then it won't be so long. She, the Vet, says Diogee has a sort of not too bad cancer and ought to have Chemotherapy. Diogee says he will think about it. So I took him home and we discussed it a few days.

I told Diogee he probably ought to have chemo but he says to me, he says I remember that doctor was going to take out your sister's kidneys and then she got well by taking choline... a plain old vitamin...hell even an old dog like me knows you have to take choline to help out a sick kidney. What if I just need some juice or vitamins?

I says to him will Diogee, it is your body and I will help you do what you want to do. Well we went back to the Vet and says, "Doc, what else you got, we do not care much for the chemo idea." Well, Doc says, you have to take the chemo or die." I says, well, wait a minute, are you telling me in the whole world its chemo or die. And the Vet says, "Absolutely."

So I says, but Doc, I know, personal like of people who got on Gerson's Therapy for Cancer... it's one of them well knowed and famous like medical doctor treatments and people got well on that and it is mainly about drinking juice and such. Doc, says, "Maybe so, but the only thing for Diogee is chemo."

"But Doc," says I, "Diogee says that all the dogs say that chemo stuff will make you as sick as dog and it has not hardly been improved none at all since it was invented... and a better body burner doesn't exist since its invention as far as I can hear. We'll go think about it."

So we went back to the house and I fixed up some fresh biscuits and gravy and a nice tea, no sugar, for our lunch. And I says, "Diogee, it looks like she thinks you better have chemo."

Diogee, says, well, I could have chemo but I know it will make me as sick as hog for sure. And anyways I was reading that Linus Pauling and that bunch had some great information about Vitamin C therapy and all such like that --- you known he is well knowed among dogs who like science as he won one of the No-Bell prizes. I sure would like to be that smart."

"Well" says I, "We can't be waiting for you to win no No-Bell prize. We have to do something."

So we go back the Vet and the Vet, she says in a nutshell, "There are no alternatives. Take the chemo or die."

So I says to her, "Doc, how many people die from taking Chemo?" And she says why would you ask that and I says because if a hundred people take chemo and 90 of them don't live it don't sound so hot to me and she says if you want to ask questions you better get out of here. Then she floors me when she says, "You get that Diogee in here and on chemo or I will have to report you for a non-chemical user and I will write you up for high blood pressure besides."

Then I says, "Well, I do not like that you are telling Diogee that there are no alternatives. Saying there are no alternatives is like when that doctor telling me I had to have a hemorrhoid operation and that I had no alternative and then my mother-in-law tells me that by taking vitamin B6 I can cure hemorrhoids and then I tell the doctor and he says taking vitamins is not a treatment and then I take the vitamin B6 for a week and get rid of the hemorrhoids. I say vitamins may not be a treatment but then I also say rain is not a fire truck but what do I care if it puts the fire out. And, by the way, I understand a real good hemorrhoid operation runs ten to thirty thousand whereas I guess vitamin B6 is about five dollars --- but of course you do lose the advantage of sharp knives, phone poles, and recovery time and all that. Any way the Doc tells me I am ignorant and I says durn sure am or I would be making a commission selling hemorrhoid operations like you do." Then the fight started; but that was a while ago.

Well that went on a while. When it came to alternatives I mentioned cabbage --- what ever did happen to those studies back in World War II --- no patents, no profits I guess. And I mentioned all the alternative clinics, and I mentioned Gerson again, and I mentioned magnetic clay, fasting, juicing, avoiding things that, in my opinion, are common poisons like high fructose corn syrup (some fools want you to think it is natural), monosodium glutamate, margarine which is just a way of selling hydrogenated oil products; I mentioned bioresonace type resources, and lots of similar stuff but in the end she, the Vet, says chemo or die.

So we went home agin. Diogee was in the house making us a toasted cheese sandwich. Diogee is partial to goat cheese and we both like homemade sourdough bread. Anyways, Diogee was making our lunch and I was rocking on the front porch when whoosh, whoosh-like the Sheriff rolls up to my house in his big airconditioned black and white. "Howdy." he sez, "Howdy." sez I. Then I said, "Sheriff Baumgardener, what can I do for you? We are about to have lunch, would you like a sourdough sandwich?"

And he says, "Don't try to butter me up. I am here to arrest that durn dog of yourn."

Well, my jaw fairly bounced off my belt buckle and I says, "But Sheriff, what has he done now?"

"He ain't done nothing," says the Sheriff, "but he is wanted for chemo treatment."

And I says, "But Sheriff, me and Diogee don't want no chemotreats. We have already told Doc that we are looking to do some alternator stuff like the Gerson medical treatment or something that don't make the dog as sick as hog."

And he sez, "It really don't matter what you want. This is government business, at least it is the business of the government to enforce the will of them that knows better, and that dog has got to be chemoed right now. So, you just surrender him."

"Surrender him?" Says, I, "Surrender him, how can you be asting me to surrender a dog that ain't done nothing, nor something either?"

"Well," says Sheriff Baumgardener, "I don't make the rules. The rules is that dog has got to have chemotreats and if I have to take him to jail to do it that is the way it is going to be. After all I have to enforce the will of the government of the United States of America and the people of this fair state and I am here to protect you with your rights and see that people get chemoed."

And I says, "Well, does your franchise as sheriff say that you get a goodly commission on these chemo treats? I thought I was the tax payers that elected you or am I wrong about that?

"No," he says, smart alecky like, "I am duly elected by the folks hereabouts."

So I says, "Are any folks hereabout telling you to arrest Diogee and stick him full of approved drugs that are going to make him dog sick and that we don't want?"

And he says, "You know the people hereabout don't give a damn with Diogee and his doctor. And you know as well as I do that the Vet turned you in for being a non-chemical user and avoiding the chemo fees and such, and she is demanding that something be done. Hell, she told me the drug company that sells the chemo has signed a citizens petition to the government about this situation with Diogee already; and there is a big complaint about you and Diogee interfering with the interstate marketing of chemicals, drugs, and medicine. As far as I know you may be costing senators and congersmen a lot of donations or at least lunch money."

And I says, "Sheriff, how can a giant corporation like a drug company go around masquerading as an ordinary citizen and signing petitions and such like they are somebody. You know as well as I do that citizen's petition ought to be from folks like you or me, not some giant corporation with more lawyers than employees?" Then he says, "Don't get smart, that is lawyer stuff and you know it." And I says, "Well, I know it is lawyer stuff, they always lead with their laywers and their their boughten and paid-for scientists and experts that have never been beyond sight of the front door of the senate dining room or thier bank.

And I says, "We ain't going to jail to take no chemo shots. My dog and me do not want to do it. That body standing here with my lunch is my dog's body and he has made clear that he does not want no chemicalization of something he does not trust."

Well, quick as wink that durn sheriff put the cuffs on me and on Diogee and before we knowed it we was in jail. It did not disturb me an awful lot. We were in jail before when the gumint declared Diogee a pig (before and after that he was my dog, but that is another story).

Like I said, I better shorten this up, so I will right here. Well I told the Sheriff that I would sue when I got out of jail and he says he won't do no good and I says a dog's body is his own and he says to me, smart aleck like, you need to grow up and, I quote, "You just think you own your body, the gumint owns your body and your dog's body and you ought to know better than to get between a cancer victim and chemo sale. Do you realize how much money can be made off chemo? Grow up, Old Son, grow up; you might treat cancer with cabbage juice, but no one can make fistfuls of dollars on cabbage juice. Just quieten down and realize that you are fighting the former almighty dollar"

Well, the short of it is Diogee got chemoed. I hope he will live over it but he is pretty sick at this time. I have taken a third mortgage on the farm, mostly to pay for chemo and to help with my legal bills. My lawyer, who jumped to my defense, says to me, "You are right, this is America and you surely own your own body. We will take it all the way to the Supreme Court where the socialists are if it takes every dime you have." He made me feel real good about it, but still Diogee has been chemotreated and, just like taking vaccines full of horrible preservatives, I am not sure he will ever be well again. But hey! Whats is a little autism, Alzheimer's, or a dysfunctional immune system, and such to a healthy person?

I would say this about chemo. Never get between a drug company and a sale... you are sure likely to come out the loser; unless, of course, you are getting a commission or at least a trip to a big golf course.

But at night, sometimes, when I sleep on the front porch and look up at the stars a winking and blinking and I jist lie there and stare off in the illimitable reaches of space, I wonder to myself, if I did not sell my body, how did it come to be that I do not own my own body nohow?

And, how come I am not the one that gets to decide if I want take chemo or eat cabbage if that is what I want to do with my body? You just ast me that? How come?

Can you just answer that?

Please?

---------------------------------------------------------------

Hey! If you think its tough reading this stuff, you ought to try writing it.

The Beautiful Voice of Lovely Susan Boyle

2009-05-25T15:28:00.000-07:00

Copyright, Terry Turner, 2009 --- permission to quote this item in entirety granted without prior permission.

Thank you God for this beautiful lady and for her incredible voice.

Dear friends, say what you will, think what you may, lovely Susan Boyle is a voice that speaks to us from the very depths of the universe, it rings with the tones of God's own hammer when he first began to beat out time and space on his karmic forges.

This wonderful lady surely comes to us from the first dawn of our first days to remind us in sound, not in words, how it must have been, how it should have been, how it yet must be.

When I hear this incredibly beautiful human singing, I know that in the end the dark lords are going to be cast down forever.

Have you lost your sense of the infinite? Have you lost the connection to the spirit? Then listen to the sound of the spirit, listen to Susan Boyle and be healed.

Sing, beautiful Susan, sing, may it please God, sing on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SncyQKe6CnQ

Barf Bags and Biscuits

2009-05-22T23:33:00.000-07:00

As an old Texan and a cowboy who has often had to fend for himself, I can rustle up a pan of biscuits and bacon in a jiffy, as we say. Believe me, if I can get my hands on a steak, a tomato, a jalapeno, I can whoop up a steaming bowl of chili. If I have the vittles I can put together some fine grease and quickly.... a little survival trick I learned at my Mom's knee. I ain't much but I do have some common sense; at least enough to tell the difference between comeuppance and commendation.

If you want to cook, or do any similar thing, you must have the makings and you have know the general rules which may vary somewhat in detail but in general are unchanging.

Makings include at the most fundamental level, an idea of what to use, how much to use, and how to put it together. If you cannot have control of those things, which are the reference points, then you will not have your breakfast. In the same light, you need measurements, standards, and some known basics to plan, to budget, to figure out how to plant a garden, or when to change an air filter... it all comes from some rudimentary "knowns."

If you cannot use your experience to tell the difference between a three gallon cedar water bucket and an eight ounce tin cup, your measurements won't work out. The measurements must be meaningful to you and to the world in which you live. When the knowns ain't knowns, then you aren't likely to get your breakfast or your retirement plan or anything else in order at any time, and maybe not at all.

Even when you can measure, you have to understand the variables... like what is the difference between a cup and half-a-cup. You must know if you can get by with water if you don't have milk. As long as it is practical, as long as it makes sense, who cares... git'er done and git'cher breakfast.

A person should not be bothered by things that just do not make sense. In other words, your frame work must make sense or all is lost. Why, for example, should your property, your well water, your garden, or your economic well being be in the hands of people who not only don't care about you but are known crooks too boot? It makes cooking hard if you can't trust folks... in fact it takes all the fun out of it.

I only make note of this because I fear that by mid to late summer 2009, all frames of reference are going to become so foggy, that no one can tell the difference between a biscuit and a barf bag.

Shoot, nothing seems right any more; even my old dog, Diogee, can't keep his gravy down when I turn on the TV. Generally, if I do turn the TV on, I have to turn it off because I get a funny feeling in my head when people are making a big deal about some movie star divorcee while the world economy is about to crash and our constitution is being trashed.

For example, I used to like Bill O'Reilly now and then, but you can't tell the difference between him and the $64,000 Question any more. I can't tell if he is trying to editorialize, speechify, or entertain.... I am the kinda guy that likes to tune in to the news, get the news, and turn off the tube; but all you can do about that anymore is just turn the durn thing off and check the Internet, wade through the nutcases, and try to dredge up a fact here and there.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that you don't get it; you do get it! You would just prefer to be wrong, the problem is YOU ARE RIGHT.

Things are wobbly, things are sort of spinning out of control; things are beginning to make less and less sense. Believe me, when you can't trust what "they" say; when a dollar is not a useful measure of value; when you can't control anything in your life without a permit, a license, or an inspection, then my friends the bad apples are about to own the barrel ... what is going on ? Don't ask me! I already can't understand the frame of reference.

Before the current current events I used to think that we got together and carried water to put out fires but, these days, it seems like every one in charge is still chopping kindling for the fire when we should have been filling water buckets. That's what I mean about a frame of reference, it needs to measure up and make sense. What can investors think when the government overturns all traditional contracts without a discussion; when bonds are owed one minute and the next minute they are owed but minus 65% of their value; or what can you think when you get a title to property only to known that the government can take it for the "greater good." I wonder whose greater good that would really be and whose hand is in whose pocket; and who has the right to cancel private property rights? Surely, surely we can all see it is hard to measure things when everything is in flux.

I am not the fellow who can grasp how we can afford to save a $40,000 dollar a year job for someone if it is going to cost the taxpayers $250,000 a year to do it. That seems to be the kind of non-think going on in Washington. A fool like me thinks that we will lose $210,000 per job per year that way and tax existing job holders to the bone. Of course, I was never much on math or science that sounds way too much like an Aggie joke to me. Maybe buying $40,000 cars for $250,000 will work out on some planet but I don't think it will be this planet.

I believe those DC fellows would produce a lot less laws and taxes and spend a whole lot less money if they had to get a shovel and clean out barns, or mow yards, swamp out a Motel 6, roughneck, or roof houses for a year or two. I do know there's a lot of biscuit making folks out here tired of sending biscuits to Washington. I say let'em eat biscuits if they can make biscuits out of their durned legislation.

Remember this, the people who are supposedly "fixing" things are the people who helped break the things they are fixing! Do you have a sense that this is not going to work out?

If you think this will work out, just remember these folks gave us bankrupt social security, broken medicare, a ruined voting system that none can trust, border in-security, immigration un-control, and, who can believe, un-education (hello this is how to make change for a dollar), energy dependence, federal oversight and estimates, an some say a 470,000 page tax code---I guess it is too big to count; these are the folks giving your money away to known criminals, foreign dictators, and special interest groups dedicated to ruination of your life at your expense.

These are the people who want to tell you how and if you can plant a garden, tax you on the view from your house, and they want to own the water under your feet; these are the folks that don't think a voter should show ID, and they don't think they ought to protect your private property rights; in fact I guess they oppose private property if you can judge --- some how I don't get a warm and fuzzy feeling when I think about these amateur goat ropers trying to fix anything.

I can tell you one thing, it is sure hard to make biscuits when all the frames of reference keep changing... and keep changing for the worse.

All this reminds me of what old Winston Churchill said once upon a time, "I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." Not only was he right, but a nation with any kind of decent representation for its people would have the lowest tax structure on earth for businesses and none for its citizens.

Foto Credit:

Unknown. The folks who helped build America by the sweat of the brow and with no thought for politics or political agendas; folks like these cotton pickers and bole pullers: Annie and Joe Turner with children, Dorothy, Ollie, William (Buddy) 1937 near Squaw Mountain (which was near Oakland which was not far from Shannon), Texas were about to wash up in a stock tank.

Joe was the son of stepmother Ada and Lige Turner. Annie was the daughter Emma and Charlie Whitsitt. The words dole, subsidy, and entitlement had hardly been heard in a lifetime and had little or no meaning for folks who finished their biscuits and gravy before sunrise and had their cornbread and beans at sundown. These folks could never get the concept of TARP and, frankly, neither do I.

TARP sounds like a New York Ciddy or Frisco type idea to me sort like advertising---lots of hype and little substance; the old where is the beef problem. Or maybe it is more like trying to get tacos al pastor in Russia; you might git some but they won't be worth a hoot.

A Spider and Its Leaf

2009-05-19T20:07:00.000-07:00

Spiders need no excuse.
Copyright 2009, Terry Turner

Powerful large hands, deeply marked with white scars won in brutal tasks, tenderly held a small drying yellow leaf. Upon the leaf a very tiny almost translucent green spider busily spun songs in its own miniature universe. The man studied the tiny spider and, bit by bit, his hands began to relax as he recalled an almost forgotten world.

Those powerful hands changed their aspect, the taunt sinews mellowed, the powerful muscles relaxed, the constant readiness drained away and, as the planes of his hands softened, you could see that once upon a time those same hardened hands had touched love, had expressed tenderness, otherwise they could not have so tenderly held the universe of the deaf spider.

At that moment, had the man of the hands chosen to speak, tears would have been in his roughened voice.

Carefully he placed the leaf into a large crevice in the stone wall, a safe harbor for the spinning spider. Rising from the stone cold floor, he drove the now unfamiliar soft feelings from his heart and began to gird himself in preparation for the march to the arena; a stone pen surmounted by indifferent witnesses to the bloody combats which followed there one after another, endless, without season, without reason.

Survivor of two hundred and twelve combats, will his hands recall tenderness tomorrow?

Red is the color of blood, and of fire, and of steel, and of iron; do we not know their colors too well?

The spider may spin without knowing what we do; but we have no such excuse.

The gladiator without choice may perish or may live.

The witnesses have chosen.

The spider spins.

Round and round.

And we round

And round

And round

Again.

Reflection on Reflection --- Map Makers

2009-05-16T17:06:00.000-07:00

Today flows not one river that flowed yesterday.

Mountains that had been now floor fish gardens.

Where blooms the forest deep, mighty deserts once ruled.

Whole cradles of civilizations, now lost, play host to the ice lords in frozen wastes yet others host only the sea.

Trusting man, rarely changing, clings to the mores and customs of his tribe and its youthful legends; yet do not the legends change their garments more rapidly than old mother earth?

Steadier courses have been charted against star far flung, yet in the the millennia they too, in their easy course, are known to sway.

Strive with the magician, the grand mariner, as you will, in the end there is but one course and 'tis easy found.

All external manifestation is change; the inner light maps the way.

Choose you map maker with care.

Photo: 1986, prospecting for gold in the treacherous Labrinyth of Utah. The old dinosaur won the battle on the banks of the Green River.

Taos Snow Bright, White, and Wide

2009-04-20T12:15:00.000-07:00

Terry Turner Copyright 10 April, 2001

Spring has raised its green and yellow bonnet only to be crowned by an unexpected cap of April snow in Taos.

A wonderful, thick, sunlight obscuring, heavy April snow falls like a blizzard at the moment.... perhaps it will stick long enough for a pleasant afternoon or two!

I love the brilliant whiteness of snow. Its unmarred purity suggests better times, better days, and better places. Snow reminds me an old piece, Hemingway’s A Clean Well Lighted Place. A clean place with pristine white tablecloths and bright lights. A place that can delay that which one might prefer not to encounter.

Decades and decades have rolled away since I read it. I can't quite bring it to the foreground of my memory, but white coffee cups on white tablecloths with some good plate or silver and real cream in a heavy creamer will invariably open the doors for a new line of thought. Such images and aromas give one a sense of new potentials for a new virgin day.

The whiteness, the ceremonial whiteness reminds one of a first baptismal, or perhaps the waiter's white shirt, white apron and black tie suggest the feeling of a confessional. But he, or she, who would take the confession, must have a whiter and wider cloth than most,
for such as they often hear too much for their own good. So a great blanketing Taos snow is needed to soften, to clean away, to dissolve and wash away dark thoughts, dark words, and dark places.

The snow gathers light and hurls back all manner of darkness. Don’t they say there is no darkness, only the absence of light?
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How long has it been since you had a hot homemade biscuit?

2009-04-11T19:40:00.000-07:00

An introduction to sourdough

Copyright, 2009, Terry Turner

Here I offer you some simple, quick, and easy sourdough methods that will enable you to start cooking with sourdough starter next week.

The whole concept is quite simple: Just mix flour and water and let it sit around while it “catches” wild yeast form the air and begins the process of souring… if you can do that, you can easily become a sourdough cook and you will be a celebrated member of your family forever afterwards (if they ever get to eat a few of your sourdough products).

Since most commercial breads and tortillas, especially white bread and tortillas, are so nutritionally bad, I want to urge all mothers and fathers to consider learning how to easily make good and nutritious bread for themselves and their families.

A. Really easy starter

2 cups of flour with enough water --- use the best water available to you; chlorinated water will slow the process or might kill it entirely ---- to make a thick batter. A few chunks won’t hurt the batter. It doesn’t have to be absolutely smooth.

Set this in a warm place for around four to five days until you note the typical aroma which is a sort of beer-like yeasty aroma.

I suggest using something like King Arthur or Hodgson Mill flour for all such recipes, unbleached of course in all these recipes. In your beginning project use just one flour, for instance a good Hodgson 50-50 bread flour. Later you can add things like a bit of rye, whole wheat, etc.

In all recipes use no metal. I use a gallon glass jug for the starter and I usually triple the recipe given here, but then I make bread around six loaves at a time so I use more starter than some people would need.

You can use any plastic, glass or ceramic container but no metal or coated containers as they are kill yeast. Begin your project by sterilizing the container with boiling water after it has been cleaned. Assuming you care cleaning with soap, after through rinsing you can further neutralize the soap on the container by giving it a light rinse with baking soda and water.

Do not use any metal spoons, use only wood or plastic because metals kill the yeast.

B. Really easy starter with milk.

Same as above but use milk instead of water.

C: Really easy starter with potato water

Boil some potatoes for your breakfast, lunch, or dinner…. Boiled potatoes mashed up with a diced jalapenos and a bit flour then fried in butter make a great addition to eggs for breakfast; or they are great taken alone, sort of like potato pancakes. You will need to boil the potatoes so you can reserve the potato water.
In the olden days this was a common way to make some sourdough starter. Just take a cup of unbleached flour and add enough of the potato water to make a thick batter. This will usually “make” in a day or two; that is it will produce the characteristic aroma.

D. Biscuit recipe for beginners
Once you have sourdough starter you need to make something. I am presently perfecting sourdough croissants, but for you early effort I suggest this easy recipe to begin:

1 cup sourdough starter 1/2 cup real butter
2 cups flour (not bleached) 2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup condensed milk 1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt
Note: You can use any milk; you can substitute water for milk; I suggest a good non commercial sea salt. In practice I usually add a sprinkle of cayenne pepper, of ginger, and of black pepper to my own biscuit mix. You may wish to skip the spices so that you can figure out seasonings at a later date.Stir all together. Pat out on flat, generously floured surface. Cut out biscuits --- a Vienna sausage can is a good sized for a cutter; and place about one inch apart on lightly greased cookie sheet or your favorite biscuit pan. Arrange the pan immediately over a pot of boiling water, let the water continue to boil; cover the biscuits with a soft clean towel; let the biscuits rest and rise for about 20 to 30 minutes; you can then brush the tops and sides, if you like, with melted butter; immediately remove them to the hot oven which was preheated to 400 degrees f. Bake about 12 to 15 minutes…. Don’t trust a timer, look at the biscuits if you are not certain how fast or slow your oven is. Cook until golden brown.

I imagine you understand that you could skip the boiling water step and go straight from the greased cookie tin to the oven All cooking is about choices, preferences, and time. If you have time you could do extra folding and buttering when preparing the dough which would make the biscuits flakier, more like croissants. But I suggest starting easy and creeping up on the more complex projects.
E. Maintaining sourdough starter

Once you have successfully made sourdough starter recipe, store it in the refrigerator, loosely covered, in your jar or other non-metal container. Crocks would be splendid but I do not use one at present.

Replace the amount of starter you use. Most recipes call for 1 cup of starter; replenish it by adding 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup warm water to the remaining starter. Return it to the refrigerator. Should you need more starter, add the flour and water first, and let it ferment for 24 hours.

Eventually a dark liquid will collect atop your starter. This is called the hooch. Just stir it in. Hooch, which is sort of beer like is, I think, the origin of real beer.

Caution
If your sourdough starter or hooch starts looking pinkish or orange color, throw it away and start over as this means that something bad or nasty has started growing in your starter. If you come home and find your starter preheating the oven, it's time to call the police.

Once a month, transfer your starter to a fresh clean container. You will discover sourdough is a bit messy, but it is well worth the trouble.

Sources: If you type in “sourdough bread recipes” in your search bar you will get tons of references. Just remember this. The idea of sourdough is to get your bread products to taste better and to rise naturally without buying yeast. Yeast costs, these days, about a dollar a pop and while it works commercial yeast does not produce the good stuff (probiotics) that sourdough does. I suggest, for the most part, that you avoid recipes which suggest commercial yeast. I do use yeast now and then when I need a quick and easy dinner roll but I start it, in any case, with sourdough.
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Quick, easy, inexpensive egg dishes
http://www.hmscrown.com/kings_kitchen/holiday_eggs/

Photo: Cotton pickers, bole pullers, 1937 Turner Archives

Three, An Odd Number

2009-03-31T18:06:00.000-07:00

Three, Such An Odd Number, Makes Agreement Difficult

Copyright, 2009, Terry Turner

Three sat on a bench.

In the distance one saw a vision of buffalo dying.

Another saw the deserted, graying remains of a shattered farm.

One saw the railroad tracks smoothly flowing from destiny to destiny; an endless chain from east to west, that which greets the sun while it awaits the certainty of sunset.

Three Soldiers sat at lunch, at mess some say.

The new recruit saw a handful of friends and lots of strangers.

The Sarge saw a couple of hundred of half trained civilians.

The cook, ah the cook, saw mouths, hundreds of mouths and thousands of teeth which described the perimeter of his world.

Three friends sat at a small dining table.

He saw a week of swallowed independence, a week of hard labor, if only mental.

She saw music lessons, meatloaf, dental work, and shoes.

The other saw a lower middle income paycheck on the dining table. Utilities and necessities ever describe the cage. And, by the way, who sold the rights to utilities?

At Christmas, they shared a table.

One saw a fount of cooking wisdom, a person who could teach the secrets of pecan pie; one who knew how to make real homemade stew.

One saw an Indian woman, Shaman-like, filled with the ancient healing lore of herbs.

The other saw a wrinkled old woman, baked by the sun, and near the end of her journey.

A family and a friend sat on the couch. Sad.

She saw the loss of her endless afternoons of freedom.

He saw debt stretching far into the future.

The friend saw an ordinary, beautiful baby, perhaps a future lady President.

We three sat together.

She thought of it as a bulky obstruction to her decor.

He knew it helped block personal conversation.

I thought of the television as a mind eating monster.

We all get to chose the pipe we want to look through. Pipes are just like binoculars. Choice defines our opinion. Chose your binoculars well.

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Your skin can look and feel better INSTANTLY, guaranteed, unconditionally

http://www.hmscrown.com/

Addendum April 2: Shortly after writing the Three blog, I had a nice note from Marty Kleva who said she loved Three. I happen to know that Marty teaches an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course and she tells me that by the 8th meeting everyone is pretty comfortable with the place they have chosen as “theirs” to sit — during this class she has everyone find a 'new' and different place to sit — then they can reflect and relate how the two views are different. She was kind enough to say this particular blog “…is so right on about perspectives — and will save it to use during that 8th class the next time I teach the course :-) ..”

Please allow me to suggest that you visit this link "mindfulness-hero's journey-individuation" that describes Marty’s 8-week course — or contact her directly at mkleva@gemfireair.com Also, there is some really fantastic photography on the http://www.gemfireair.com/ site.
Marty also presents the course with private clients by phone.

Solar Event Takes Down Communications in Britain, 1859

2009-03-27T20:02:00.000-07:00

Are you ready for the unexpected emergency?

Copyright, 2009, Terry Turner

The worst thing I can think of in the zone of personal responsibility is to fail to make preparations that you fully realize were strongly indicated and yet did not make preparations. It is even worse when you know you had all or part of the resources to make the preparations. In plain English, I have of late been urging friends and family to make, improve, or extend their preparations for emergencies of any type. These days the sources of emergencies seem to be multiplying. The problem is that few of us are ready for the most elementary disturbance in our life style.

We can expect possible disruptions of every description from the sources we generally think of as terrorists. We tend to think of foreign terrorists but, alas, we have various kinds of home grown terrorists as well.

Those of us who are mature can attest to global climate change (I certainly do not endorse the generally publicized ideas of global warming) but those of us who lived in the days of golden near perfect weather can now see changes that we knew were coming when we began to recede from the golden era of weather.... we are out of that wonderful zone and time frame and weather issues are on the rise to include tornadoes, cyclones, winds, flood, ice, drought, heat, and extensive "irregularity" in weather patters. Any notable local or national variation in these conditions could shut down a city or state, or even the nation, easily, and at least for a few days.

Bigger events, such a earthquakes and tsunamis can not be ignored. There are active volcano's bubbling away in several places including Alaska. Check the Internet for quake maps, you might be surprised at the number of smokers out there.

Civil unrest is disturbing to contemplate, but who can deny an angry mood running the country, a mood that can be tapped and directed like a blow torch or, perhaps worse, simply ignites and cannot be directed. Wide spread civil unrest could certainly keep you from your corner grocer, might cut off things like power and water, and cause other disturbances.

The there is the rising issue of solar flares. They have been a problem in the past and certainly are going to be a problem in the visible future. Solar flares can knock out electric transmission, cell phones, radio, television, and monitoring systems that could immediately disrupt water, transportation, sewage, and other delivery and processing systems. Think about where you live and how it would be without traffic lights, without cell phones, refrigeration and, for example, air conditioning.

Today the former minister Graham Stringer, Labor Party, said that Brits ought to take steps to get ready for a repetition of the solar storm of 1859. When that solar storm hit Earth it paralyzed much of the telegraph system throughout the world. Stringer urged the government to make plans to deal with a powerful solar flares that might disrupt the National (Electric) Grid in England. He noted that such a disturbance in the electric distribution would create severe water and food shortages. He motion in Commons stated ... such an event could now 'knock out the National Grid, which would lead to a loss of water supply, transport and food and therefore create a national emergency."

The potential for disruptions is almost endless. Power issues, local or national, can limit your access to cash disbursement machines, shut down the use of credit cards, and so forth. The time to be make ready for such disturbances is now.

One problem which we all face is that Americans expect things to work all the time. We expect the gas pump to fill us up, we expect the credit card processor to work, we are sure the cash disbursing teller machine will be full of loot; we expect the artificially flavored semi-poisonous high fructose corn syrup yogurt to be on the shelf --- good for us or not. And, thank God, in this country, all things have generally been constantly accesible to us.

But, remember, please, it only takes a small hiccup these days to disrupt things... due to the lack of diversity whole crops, world wide, can be wiped out in the blink of an eye. Delivery systems could be shut down by communication problems, by earthquake, by storm, by fuel and many other issues. It can't hurt to be prepared.

There are many resources on the Internet that discuss how to prepare for emergencies. The following link is an excellent place to begin:

http://www.hmscrown.com/life_tools/emergency_be_prepared.html

One of my favorite things for my emergency kit is heavy duty carpet or upholstery thread and large needles, both straight and curved. You can repair many things, like tennies, backpacks, coats, suspenders, tents, etc., with strong thread and a good needle. I find a fly fishing vest is a great resource to organize and keep such small items ready for my "go bag."

Be prepared for yourself and for your family and friends. You'll feel better knowing you are ready.

Photo credit: The Rainbow over Taos is my own, it appears in the fine art gallery here:
http://www.hmscrown.com/fine_art/HMS_Gallery/Taos_Rainbow.html
It is the best rainbow shot of my amateur career taken with a throw away digital which was given to me by my niece, Linda Jo Reeves, circa 2001.

Taos Spring

2009-03-24T22:14:00.000-07:00

Terry Turner, Copyright 2009

Today is beautiful; the clouds are lurking well below the horizon, off in the direction of Canada, and leave only a pure, deep blue sky as backdrop for the two hundred year old cottonwoods and the towering willows that are very yellow this time of year.

We were having snow skiffs just days ago as it is still, barely, winter here. Only a few trees are beginning to leaf out but the hundred foot green spruce are a welcome spot of green against the brilliant blue.

Black, black, huge crows bark from the tree tops, arguing away. One rough old crow asserts "... it's tomorrow!"

A senior crow rebuffs "... it's yesterday!"

And so they quarrel all day.

Of course all crows know it is today, not yesterday, nor tomorrow. The crow’s muttering of tomorrow and of yesterday are mere reminders to be here now.

Their loud arguments are only meant to distract humans from the more serious crow discussions that are conducted further up the mountain around the Sacred Blue Lake.

Cheery robins and great black and white penguin-like magpies take no truck in such discussions because they are relentlessly stalking the perfect twig for their spring nests --- and their discerning mates will accept nothing less than the perfect twig.

Old crow, reminds me, “Governments, nations, and people of importance come and go. The Sacred Blue Lake is eternally tranquil and invisibly reflecting the blue sky invisibly reflecting its own blue waters.

Governments, nations, and people of importance come and go. The Sacred Blue Lake is forever.

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Dreaming on the Edge of Santa Elena Canyon

2009-03-19T17:56:00.000-07:00

Circa 1976

Copyright Terry Turner 2009

We were driving across the vast levelness of western Texas headed for the Big Bend mountains and the Rio Grande. My passengers, some engineers looking for fun, and me, a white guide, late to the game, at the age of 37. Loaded with rafts, canoes, and a C2, we were equipped well enough for the river which is calm enough. And it only surprises one, if unsuspected rains come roaring down the canyons and at such times, be wary, hell is rising.

The black night stretched endlessly across the dreamless desert. Though our searching eyes saw nothing, we sensed, we knew the endless flatness of the land --- a long level flatness racing toward a rupture of mountains.

Hours passed. Conversation faltered, then ceased. Finally, out of the darkness, pink and white appeared in the distant eastern sky. Gray fingers of light began creeping silently through the desert. The gray light slowly revealed the stubbled face of the desert floor punctured here there with looming prickly cactus and carelessly strewn boulders.

The gray green of the brush was just becoming distinct from the pale gray morning when the sun, in single blinding flash, leapt over the horizon and stood, angry and red. A blazing Martian god, daring the desert to move or lift its head. Instant by instant the fiery fury rose higher and higher to loose its full burning power on the prostate August desert. Its roaring heat turned the clouds into a glowing furnace from horizon to horizon.

The submissive desert lay quiet, knowing it must feign death to survive yet anther day of scrutiny by the angry red eye. The humiliation of the vast desert and the steady rise of the omnipotent sun notarized our finite existence more surely than death and with much less mystery.

I took great joy in the visual feast of the approaches to the Big Bend of Texas despite the stark and almost lifeless plain which we crossed. We were a mere dot inching across millenniums of erosion for the plain which we crossed had once been soaring mountains, now by time, reduced to a dusty desert.

I was not pleased to note that vultures came with the sun and took both an early and abnormal interest in our arrival.

We were still hours from the river and a full day and night from the roaring hell of the rock slide in Santa Elena canyon. I had driven most of the night, so I turned the wheel over, and made myself comfortable on a raft packed in the back of the van., and drifted off to sleep.

But sleep is not my favorite occupation. It’s the dreams --- the people and the things in the dreams--- dreams do not leave me refreshed. I went quickly into a restless sleep and immediately a dream arose. A shape, a darkling shape, spoke to me. "Friend, friend, " it said in a quiet voice, "friend, turn not way. Neither seal your lips, nor close your eyes for I have seen you as you really are. I saw you long ago, a perfect soul then, long before the dark night of this new time."

"I saw you long ago in these mountains. I saw you under the shadowed warmth of a cloudy sky where we stood in the mouth of an ancient cave. I saw reason sparkle in your speechless mind. It was long, long sun years ago." Then he, or it, sighed, and said, " Ah, how true speech would have been could we have spoken then."

Ah, to sleep without dreaming.

Ah, to sleep.

Ah, sleep.

Sleep.

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Be prepared for emergencies
http://www.hmscrown.com/life_tools/

Addendum: The river, running through Santa Elena Canyon is usually a trickle but, if heavy rains occur up river, it is ranging torrent, class VI or ???. The roar alone is terrifying. If you have not been on the river at flood stage in Santa Elena you have not seen water

2009-03-09T16:49:00.000-07:00

How Not to Invest in King Cotton

Copyright Terry Turner

Originally this was part of a letter to my family regarding the financial crisis of 2008-2009 that, for the record, I feel is a moral and ethical and societal crisis masquerading as a financial crisis.

We are now threatened by another depression, mainly due to the loss of our factories and many outsourced jobs culminating in the recent crisis. No matter what you may think, the ability to create something real is the key to wealth whether it is a steel widget or a line of code, the real tangible things are what can be translated to wealth; slicing and dicing financial instruments and setting up indices for gambling purposes may enrich a few folks here and there but for every person enriched someone must lose. Such dealing does not enrich the country or the average citizens of the country in the same way that good nut and bolt manufacturer would.

The Great Depression had receded in some parts of the United States but the depression of the thirties lingered for years in many parts of the southwest United States. It was very much a reality for my family at the time of this story, which it seems to me, was about 1942 or 1943. All of the family members are now deceased, except me, so factual confirmation of the date is beyond my reach.

Cotton was one form of real wealth at the time of these events; but King Cotton was in trouble even though the feared and hoped for mechanical pickers were only about ten years down the road, the synthetic monster was conceived and about to rise up.

Joe Turner, my father, really my grandfather but that is a different story, faced with a series of losses spanning the Great Depression and afterwards was considering investing in a picked cotton field in order to leverage the family out of indentured servitude.

Dad told mom, Annie Turner, that he wanted to sell their remaining furniture, beds, kitchen, and all in order to raise money to purchase the "leavings" of a large cotton field that had already been picked (or pulled).

Dad felt there was enough scrap cotton in that field that, when gathered by the family, would net the family enough cash to get them out of the cotton fields where the Great Depression had landed them. Our particular tribe, at that time, consisted of Mom, Dad, Dot, and Ollie and, of course, me. Our brother, Buddy, the oldest boy, was in far off Egypt fighting Nazis. So with four and a half pickers we could cover a lot of territory quickly. Mom had made me a small cotton sack which I could drag along. My particular job, as the smallest, and certainly the youngest, was to be the “digger” I would gather cotton that had fallen on the ground---every visible particle. I remember it was a huge field. I was standing in the back of a wagon when Dad showed it to me and it ran on forever, stretching to the horizon in all directions, at least so it looked to me.

Annie agreed to risk it. They sold everything except one of Mom’s trusty iron frying pans and one heavy bean pot with a good lid---these two instruments became the sole source of our family treasure for a long, long time. I remember Mom talking about the loss she felt watching the mattresses and kitchen table go out the door and knowing that we would soon be vagabonds camped under a tree and she would be trying to cook on her knees by a smoldering camp fire.

Our entire household goods inventory could not have been much --- remember we are not talking about Emperor Jahan’s Taj Mahal, nor even a small palace. The household goods, if I can recall them, consisted of a very small iron wood burning stove and its hardware, a kerosene fired cook stove on tall legs; two iron bedsteads --- we got to keep our sleeping pallets, a small kitchen table with four or five chairs with rope bottoms, I think I recall Mom’s another chest or table of sorts, and three or four odd chairs---nothing upholstered by any stretch of the imagination. A few pots and pans, and two or three lamps of the kerosene variety that had a sort of pie plate reflecting apparatus attached, and a radio that had a rather large battery. Our “goods” were rounded out by a large iron pot for hog boiling and washing clothes; two or three large washtubs. We had no bathroom, of course. There was a traditional tree stump outside the door with a large enamel wash basin on it and, not far off, the traditional privy of the era. Winter and summer we washed up al fresco and, in the winter that fresco was pretty chilly. There was no icebox, no freezer, no television or anything of an electric nature… all those electric wonders and things like cars, for our family, were still years away from the cotton fields of West Texas. In those fields poverty was king, and the “colors” of his kingdom were not white, black, or brown. The color line was very clear and determined by who pulled boles and who picked the cotton and who did not pull or pick. No black child was any blacker than I at the time.

I could sense that we were hopeful and fearful; hopeful for better times and places but certainly fearful of losing our roof and four walls. To my young mind the idea of moving under a tree seemed worrisome to say the least. And, on deeper level I could sense the fear, apprehension, and unknown concerns that could be felt but that were not expressed by the rest of the family. The furniture sold, in my memory, as a single lot to a fellow with a wagon. We helped him load the wagon and our home, barely filling his wagon, trundled away westward bound, around sunset.

Dad handed over the cash price to the owner and, for a brief time, a month or so, owned all rights to the scrap cotton in that particular field. I think the field belonged to Mr. Rice and I think it was near Goree or Munday, Texas. Wherever located, it was a long way from anywhere. I do recall there was a large boulder near the little shack we lived in. I suppose it was too big to blast away. I used to climb up on it and, stretching to stand as tall as I could to see as far as possible, I saw nothing at all in any direction except the endless cotton fields that flowed away in all directions.

That evening, carrying our few possessions, we moved under a tree on the edge of the cotton field which we were going to glean the next day. Mom made red beans and cornbread over the campfire, and we went to "bed" lying on some of the quilts that she had insisted on keeping. You can guess we were plagued by apprehensive feelings

Not long after our supper, a huge storm suddenly blew in with high winds and driving hail. When dawn came, Mom and Dad peered across the vast field of cotton, the black leafless stalks marching toward the bleak horizon. Gazing across that vast expanse, they saw not one speck of white cotton. The storm, possibly a tornado, though it would have late in the year for tornados, had simply sucked up virtually all of the remaining scrap cotton and whirled it away. The despair was palpable.

Cold, wet, hungry, and totally without assets, you can believe that our little family felt very much like Job. No money, no home, no food, and nothing to hold onto except personal grit and one's belief in God.

Mom and Dad decided they would have to go different ways to hammer their way out of the situation. Dad, borrowed some money, I think a dollar or two, from Mr. Rice to "finance" the trip to Mom’s father, Charlie Whitsitt. After herding our little tribe over a period of several days to the Whitsitt family place in Oakland, near Shannon, Texas where at least there was some shelter and a caring family, Dad would set his sights on Fort Worth and its more hopeful economic atmosphere.

These days one can hardly imagine walking a hundred miles with three kids to feed ----remembering as well there were no convenience stores, no bathrooms, no where to rest, no hotels, no motels in the usual sense. just the bleak distance and miles to go and no visible help for mile after mile. Of course many people have walked much further and under worse circumstances. I remember none of this except what Mom drilled in my head later. As to memory, I am reconstructing this to the best of my ability, but I may be mixing and matching events; I can only assure you that this tale is just a typical tale of the times. I know that it was a long, long walk. I am sure it was more than a hundred miles from Munday to Jacksboro which was still several miles from Charlie Whitsitt’s place in Oakland, near Squaw Mountain.

Dad got us situated at Charlie Whitsitt’s, then walked on to Fort Worth where he somehow became a boxer and took enough beatings to earn some money before rejoining Mom. I do recall Dad telling me that he had quit boxing after seeing Joe Louis hit someone. I do not know if he actually saw Louis not. I can’t be sure if Louis was ever in Fort Worth or Dallas or fought there. I know Louis was with the military about that time and in Europe part of that time. I do recall that Dad was happy to quote Louis’ comment that “We’ll win because we are on God’s side” Louis also was widely quoted for saying "Lots of things wrong with America, but Hitler ain't going to fix them." I do know that something connected with Joe Louis put an end to Dad’s boxing career.

Sometime after Fort Worth, Dad worked in an ice house (they produced ice which, mainly was delivered by wagon to family iceboxes). Dad was able to get cheap strawberries at the ice house. Mom joked, later, that he fed her and the family on strawberries at one time for days on end and, for that reason, she has since always hated strawberries. The strawberries, as I recall, preceded Dad going to work in Wichita Falls for the old Fort Worth and Denver railroad. He became a fireman (stoking the boiler on the engine. He later was killed in a railroad accident during the course of which he saved the lives of some fellow employees by shoving them into the water tank while they and the entire train were engulfed in flames from a Phillips 66 gasoline transport. Dad and the truck driver were killed.

The only point to this story is that we are all survived disaster after disaster. Annie and Joe Turner’s genes and the genes of countless similar survivors are still in motion in you and in me and in all the similar children of such similarly hard pressed folks. We are also tough, we are also survivors. And we will all do what our fathers and mothers did before us. We will just suck it up, shave, and go to work. Get over it, get through it.

I think it worth mentioning something that Charlie Whitsitt, Mom's dad, told me when we were talking about chopping down trees. He was well known for being very handy with axes (there are many kinds and they all have a special purpose). We were talking about cutting down the iron-hard Bois D' Arc which is good post material. I was trying to help him chop trees for a fencing project. I had simply failed to make a dent in the tree assigned to me. Charlie was determined to enable me to use the axe effectively, an essential art of the day. He said, "…There's not much to it. Just keep your iron sharp. Strike that tree like you are going to cut it down with one blow. Then just keep hitting it. Keep hitting the same place. It will sure fall down. No tree is harder than the iron in your hand...”

And it wasn’t; I eventually knocked it and a good many others down.

None of us can escape the trials and misfortunes of our personal times or the generational issues that plague the times in which we live --- whether we are the sharecroppers or the Mr. Rices of the world, we all have our hands to play and the pain of one part may be greater than the pain of another part, but we all have a price to pay. Experience assures me that God equips us for the challenges we face and, as practitioners of our faith, we have nothing to fear.

What is the way out; what is the way through? Stick with your prayers, meditate, and stay as positive as you can --- this crisis will pass and life will normalize in some fashion even if you have to walk to Cow Town.

The real problem, it seems, these days, is that while we can survive and get through, at what will we arrive when we “get through?” Lately, our House of Representatives and our Senate are filled, with few exceptions, by a species of uncrowned kings, air head czars, and panjandrums by default, and self perpetuating elite that feel entitled to steal from the public trough. The American Republic is in shreds, what was called a Democracy has propelled itself into a sort of Socialist-Communist tag team and while an immoral Washington DC parties on, whoring on the body of Freedom and auctioning off our patrimony to the highest bidder.

As we watch chaos spreading and we see the lamp of freedom burning low, these are sad times, indeed, In the time of our fathers, this sort of thing could not have continued as they would have gotten the attention of the Congress with and pitchforks and singletrees (whiffletrees, for my Northern friends). The difference, I suppose, is that the immoral transactions and vile conduct are hidden from easy public view by looking-good television images which, like a magician’s hands, divert our attention. Now it seems that we look to television to tell us what to think instead of judging things on the bare facts.

One can hope that some morning soon people will begin to ask of Washington D.C., “never mind what you said, what did you actually do?” Then, perhaps, we, like Joe Louis, will be on God’s side.

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Emperor Shah Jahan described his Taj Mahal in these words
Should guilty seek asylum here,Like one pardoned, he becomes free from sin.Should a sinner make his way to this mansion,All his past sins are to be washed away.The sight of this mansion creates sorrowing sighs;And the sun and the moon shed tears from their eyes.In this world this edifice has been made;To display thereby the Creator's glory.
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P.S. Let the record show that Lewis Jernigan, Himself, roaming the Red River Valley amongst the remaining Wichita and Kickapoo Indians, viewed the industrial activities associated with picking cotton and pulling boles with great reservation, industrial arts that were, no doubt, beneath the purposes of a future Captain.

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Your skin can look and feel better, instantly, guaranteed

www.hmscrown.com

2009-03-06T13:12:00.000-08:00

Dandelion Generations

Copyright Terry Turner

Out the window I see a fresh crop of dandelions shaking their fistful of bright yellow swords at the Sky God, but already the first dandelion crop that had advanced to the attack, lived brightly, lived briefly, and then suddenly died. Victims not of winter, not of summer, but victims only of time.

Only A few yesterdays past they sprang forth with all the power of youth but, in ain a few small moments, they grew mature, suddenly aged, and stepped over the edge to again become the raw stuff of the universe. How important they seemed; how important the games seemed; but as they and we draw near to the edge of eternity, how unimportant all seems.

Perhaps we should all have more hot chocolates, give and take more hugs, have more well steeped teas, take longer and more pleasant breakfasts, read more good books, and spend more time in the afternoon sun ---- and pay less and lessattention the fury of social clamor. As old Kahlil Gibran said, "… the movingfinger, having writ, moves on.... "

I shall listen more to the barking crows and less to the recurring and meaningless chatter, cajoling, and threats of presidents, kings, brokers, bankers’ congressmen, and terrorists. God and karma, in good time, will attend totheir just needs. Those time stealing people are always with us; but thecrow is only here today and has only a few words to spare for us ere it isaway to speak with angels and other vapor’d creatures.

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Reflecting on the death of my brother, Gene. He fought for our freedom. Gene survived the Nazis but was killed by Helicobacter Pylori Bacteria. H Pylori infects about one in every two mature adults in the United States.

Taos, New Mexico July 21, 2003
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For your children, for yourself, your family and friends, be prepared for emergencies
http://www.hmscrown.com/life_tools/

2009-03-06T11:03:00.000-08:00

A Little Dust in West Texas

Copyright by Terry Turner 2005

The night wind whined around the stark corners of the tiny two room shack perched on the edge of an endless sea of prairie grasses. Coming from the west, the wind carried the sand, a red sand, finer than flour. Dry and powdery, the sand was so fine that the wind could push it through the tiny spaces around the edges of window panes.

The dust was everywhere; sifting through the windows, drifting in little puffs through the damp sheets hung over the shack's two doors. It drifted down from the ceiling rafters, it kept coming in little puffs through the wood burning kitchen stove, it was carried up through the bare wooden floor by little gusts of wind.

I hated the relentless mournful wind for carrying the biting sand and the choking dust. It was, to me, a dusty vampire, smoky red, stalking every living thing in a sun baked, featureless prairie. The prairie, our prairie, our home was a paper dry place where life, nearly sucked dry, had long since been too difficult.

I lay on my rude bed staring out into the impenetrable night. A night made even darker by its burden of dust and sand. My bed, a rude pallet, was made of an old cotton sack stuffed with corn shucks and some cotton gleaned from the picked fields. A piece of ducking, very much like awning cloth, served for a cover when needed in the summer. In the winter a quilt was added and we wore more clothes warmth. The idea of themostats and central heat were a space age away from our prairie place.

I was careful to keep a piece of damp feed sack over my nostrils and mouth. The wet sack was a crude filter of sorts to help keep out the dust out of my mouth and nose.

My mother knew, we all knew, if one breathed in too much dust a few planks would soon be needed to make a burial box. For that reason we all used a damp breathing cloth and the worn sheets draped over the two doors were usually kept damp. The larger cracks in the floor and walls were stuffed with bits of paper or sacking or cotton to help retard the ebb and tide of the dust.

The dust rose through the floor cracks in little huffs and puffs;
it sifted into the ceiling through the gaping spaces between the roof shingles; floated down like a continual fine mist from the open ceiling
rafters; and it blew in around the windows and doors; it migrated like a mist of rain through the very walls that were mostly paperless. On the dining table it built up in little drifts around the base of the salt and pepper shaker, it gathered at every corner in the room, it covered every surface
whether horizontal or vertical..... in no way could the creeping
red plague be avoided.

The rims of our nostrils were outlined by the red dust barely dampened by our own breathing.

Dark circles of red mud marked a patch under every nostril. Red mud grew from each corner of our mouths. Red mud caked at the corners of our eyes.

Our drinking water took on a rose tint and tasted like mud.

The taste of the dust was in all the food.

It was in the coffee.

Our spit was reddish.

Death, disease, and poverty frolicked in the early sunrise. They, being giants could easily see above and beyond the haze.

Small and helpless creatures that we were, we could not see beyond the red haze and morning was only a few visible degrees from night. The darkling sun held no promise as we greeted another dusky red dawn.

Of course, as you might guess, people from the government wanted to tell us how to fix things, what we had done wrong, why we should shoot our cow and such, and, otherwise, to assure us that we deserved to lose whatever little possessions we had.

Fools thought we could know the weather. Fools thought organic farming of no importance. Fools thought government could manage wind, sun, rain, and earth. Fools thought the government would feed, clothe, and protect us.

Not then, friends; not now, friends.

Observe the ancient rules.
Respect the earth.

Preserve water.

Take care.

Care.
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A real bull in Wilbarger County Texas

2009-03-04T20:37:00.000-08:00

Pure Bull!

Copyright by Terry Turner

A brief account of a bull I met while in Wilbarger County, Texas.

Yes sir! There's something to admire in purity and, as far as I know, there's a bull, a real bull; a natural, pure bull over in Wilbarger County.

Sure, there are bulls in Jack County and most counties. In fact there is more bull than not in most counties. But this bull, belonging to George Ancell, is an exceptional bull. We all know that a quality bull is hard to come by but, if you have one, his services will be in demand by other ranchers. That's a fact. But friends, have you ever seen a bull that had such a powerful air about him that heifers and cows would tear down a fence to get to him?

I have recently been out in neighboring counties trying to pick up an oil lease or two and, while on the Ancell spread in southeast Wilbarger County, I saw this magnificent bull. Believe it or not, heifers were tearing down a fence to get to that grand old Brahma bull.

The Ancell bull was standing up a knoll, kind of taking the morning sun and sort of minding his own business; he was probably thinking about pork belly prices, the weather, and such. I was thinking about
how to strike a deal when I noticed the heifers on the neighboring spread begin to crowd up along the fence line and they just took to admiring that huge giant of a bull and, now and then, one of them ì
would let out a pretty flirtatious bellow. Well, folks, the first thing I knew, those heifers were tearing that fence plumb down.

Now they weren't violent. They just wallowed that fence down so they could get a mite closer to that Ancell bull. And he, being neighborly and having been given an engraved invitation, so to speak, he just naturally had to go over and demonstrate his social powers which, as I saw were considerable.

Now, as luck would have it, the neighboring rancher who owned these amorous heifers came along and he was plumb upset.

Of course, as the rancher came to the party late, he accused the bull of breaking down the fence and generally sweated up his Stetson. Well, I told him that no such happened and that those cows just took down the fence to get at that Ancell bull.

Then that gentleman questioned my honesty and implied that my powers of observation were deficient. Further, he said that he had built the fence himself and that it was a good fence.

"Well," I said, sort of smart-alecky, " George Ancell had learnt to build fences that were "caballo alto, toro fuerte, and serpente seguro."

And he said, kind of insulting like, "What the hell does that mean?"

And I said, "Well that's how George's Grandfather taught his boys to build a fence and, anyone ought to know, it means "horse high, bull strong, and snake proof" which is the way the Ancell bunch have built their fences for more than a hundred years."

Then, kind of loud like, he shouted, "You can't build no snake proof fences!"

And I said, real quiet like, "I never said I could. I said that was how the Ancell boys built fences."

Hot like, he says, "Nobody can build a snake proof fence!"

There not being any rattlers real close, I said, "Well do you see any snakes around here?"

And he says to me, "What has that got to do with this damn bull mounting my heifers and tearing down my fence."

"Well," I reminded him, kind of soft like, "What I said was that the heifers tore the fence down"

He says, "Do you expect me to believe that?"

So I said, "Do you see any of the fences down on the other parts of this ranch?" And then I said," Mister, I don't know your name, but I have driven all over this place and I have five tires ruined and my own hide full of thorns to prove it and I know the fences are up in all other directions and, further more, as you claim to have built this fence which is not strong enough to keep heifers in, you ought to check with George Ancell on how to build a fence. George knows how it is done."

"Well," he says to me, "You are an insulting cuss if I ever saw one."

And I says back to him, "Well, I never meant to insult you or your ugly heifers for I am a stranger around here and, aside from owning one percent of the sperm that the bull has seen fit to share with your heifers, I have no interest in the matter except to help arrange for you to pay for the noble and registered sperm which you have taken from this ranch without a proper handshake."

I had no ownership in the bull at all but, as I was trying to do business with George, I thought I ought to try to protect his interests and why should a bull do all that work for nothing?

Then he says to me, "I ought to correct your attitude with a cattle prod."

Then, with the beads of sweat fairly popping out of his hat band, he says "Nothing but that elephant of a bull could have knocked down that fence."

And I said, "Well, it's a funny thing to me that I have seen nearly thirty miles of Ancell fences standing up to the bull on one side and herds of cows on the other and none of them are knocked down. So, it seems to me, the problem has got to be with the quality of your fence and the fact that your heifers are not properly serviced on your own ranch; any damn fool can see that."

Well about then he reached behind the seat of his fancy pickup and swung a double barrel shot gun out and laid it across his lap.

About that time a big old blue racer, about seven feet long, came snaking across the broken down fence onto the Ancell ranch and I says, "Now look what you have done! George will have snakes all over his place if you don't get that fence back up."

And he says to me, "Mister, in order that I can ship your body to the proper place, just tell me where you are from and what name do the misfortunates who know you call you?"

Well, from the glint in his eye, I thought that I had gone too far but, not being entirely stupid, I says to him, kind of straightforward like, " Why I am from over to Zacaweista and some folks call me Bucky."

Then quick like he says, "You ain't Bucky"

And quick like I says, "As you have never had the honor of meeting me, how do you know that I am not Bucky?"

He looked at me for a minute and he stepped down and started trying to get the heifers back on his side of the fence and he says quiet like, "Mister, I do not believe you are Bucky, for he is a well knowed gentleman in these parts and a scholar of sorts; and I believe you are neither."

Well, seeing as he was in a bad temper, I left while he attempted to convince his heifers to depart from the company of the bull.

Since then I have received four legal cease and desist orders from some legal outfit representing Bucky of Zacaweista; and a friend told me that George had brother by the name of Tom and that George had offered Tom a thousand dollars if he could find my body at the bottom of a well; and I have made up my mind to try to avoid dealing with people from Wilbarger County for they are nearly as peculiar and troublesome as the folks in my own county.

You folks know, of course, that my real name is Terry Don Turner; and this whole matter is a fiction. It sort of happened when my friends, Howard Bennett and Richard Ford Thompson, and I were drilling an oil well with George Ancell on his historic ranch in Wilbarger County. Don Elliott could have helped us lose a deal of money on the same occasion. but he declined as we had no mustard sandwiches to sweeten the deal for him.

A dry hole in Texas, especially a deep one, will drive you to do, say, and write peculiar things.

Since then, George has had four offers to build twelve thousand miles of ranch fences "caballo alto, toro fuerte, and serpente seguro."

2006. P.S. Obviously some of you kids are too young too know spit about history or Texas. The Ancell ranch adjoined Zacaweista which was the operational headquarters of the W T Waggoner Ranch. The Ancells and the Waggoners used to take turns moving fifty miles of fence line a night in order to take advantage of more grass. They spent a lot of time shooting at each other. I have been in the cellar where old man Ancell, George’s grandfather, holed up while the Waggoner’s were pumping enough 30-30 Winchester lead into the premises to make the whole area sink two feet. These guys, boys and girls, were men; PC had not been invented. And liberalism had not dawned in their day (or mine).

With the advent of genetic engineering few things are real any more, not even beef. Beef tastes more like cardboard than steak these days. I guess it can lay around the refrigerated section without spoiling, maybe for a month or two, but neither time nor red dye will make it a steak. I don't care how many excitotoxins you inject in that mystery meat it will never be the t-bone or sirloin of yore.

2009, P.S. Some of with those memories are nearing the end of our string, and one of these days, folks, one of these days even those who remember will be a memory and the final gates will close on those memories and the fading process will begin as our world passes away.
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Diogee, my old dog, decides to run for Congress

2009-03-04T20:33:00.001-08:00

How it was that my dog, Diogee, became a pig!

Copyright by Terry Turner

This story is hard for me to tell. It is complex-like as the actual story is about how my dog, Diogee, come to run for congers. But, of course how I can I tell you that story when you never knowed I had a dog anyhow. That is why I am not sure where to start but I guess this is as good a start as can be got.

As you know some towns are kind political like and filled with traffic traps and goings on that are not quite democrat like. Our little town is like that and in prior times has been knowed to have a murder trail over and a hanging done, a burial finished, and supper served in one day, at least before the gumit wouldn’t allow us to be so quick like. Anyways, here we do what we can and I only mention how quick like justice can be in regard to what happened to me and Diogee. But we were innocent, of course.

Buford's Barbecue and Barbershop
I wisht I had never gone down to Buford's Barbecue and Barbershop for a barbecue sandwich and a hair cut. I never did like the smell of burnt hair so I seldom go down there even though Buford is well knowed for his singed barbecue sandwiches and ribs. But while he was cutting my hair his dish washer, Lamonz, ast him, “What do you want me to do with these turnip scraps?” And Buford sez, “Just throw them out back and Turner's pig will eat them.” Well, I jumped out of my chair and told them I did not have no pig, nor any truck with no pigs and, except for Areta's pigs that are always visiting around, that I seldom even had nothing to do with a pig.

And Buford sez, “Well what is that eating them turnip tops?”And I sez that is my dog, Diogee.; And they all laught at me and said, "That ain't no dog," and went on insulting like. A fellow setting there was reading a hunting magazine and he sez to me look here at this here picture of a a dog knowed as an Irish Setter, and he sez, “Now that is a dog and any fool can see your Diogee don't look like no Irish Setter.”

“Course not,” I sez,. “And, besides, Diogee is from Oklahoma and neither of us has never been to Ireland or even to Arkansas.”

Then another fellow go piped up and he said to me, "That durn dog of yourn is a pig and any way you can tell just by his curled up tail that he is a pig."

Some blood flowed, but it was not violet
Well, I could not have Diogee called a pig. Him being a dog, and all. So I grabbed a hot barbecue sandwich and mashed in his face. It had mustard on it. And Buford he jumped back and grabbed my arm and I swung around and hit smack on his nose. Then unfortunate events followed which caused the air to turn fairly blue and some blood flowed. It was a fair squabble for a time even though it was among friends and not violet like family doings. Nobody got an ear bit off or nothing like that.

When the Sheriff, who was sort of insulting, took me before the Justice Judge. That durn judge, he fined me $10 for public frolic and mayhem and then he said to me that the court declart Diogee was a pig.

Now don't that beat all?

My dog had become a pig, and in just one afternoon.

Here I have had a dog for going on a dozen years and the gumit has declart my dog was a pig. Well I commenced in on him and he said I was a contempt and he was going to lock me up to honor his court and raise the fine which I could not afford on no account. So he said to shut my mouth, which I eventual did, because of the fine and his honor all that. So that is how it come out, all of a sudden, that my dog, Diogee, is a pig.

If I had wanted a durn pig I would have got one from Areta as she is the pig expert instead of the gumit declaring my dog is a pig. At least they did not say he was a horse which would have cost me dreadful more for feed.

I have never trusted the gumit and I believe to that extent I am absolutely right as it seems the gumit cannot tell the difference between hogs and dogs. And anyways that durn Justice never even went outside to look at Diogee. So he ruled against me as you might say from a distance. At least the Sheriff had seen and kicked me and Diogee.

I told Diogee I had no idea how judges could get so much power. He said it was easy and that all you needed to be a powerful judge was an acquaintance with a snake and about a fifty thousand in cash.

Of course, all this happint long after Diogee had developed an interest in my Mother-in-law's grant piano and her solid silver tea service. But these are the things that begun to get Diogee to think about making the run to congers. You know, so he could be right up there with all the other hogs and dogs in Washin DC.

Not the end
This is not the beginning and not the end, but it is how Digoee become a pig.
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